Just Reward
by Man of Sitruuna
Summary: Three-Shot. It's Naruto's eighteenth birthday, and two changed kunoichi decide to make it special in their own individual ways. But what Naruto eventually gets is something twice as big. Semi-serious. NaruInoSaku. Lemon. Don't follow, fic is complete and will not be updated.
1. October 9th

**Disclaimer: I own no aspects of the Naruto Universe...*cries*...**

Just Reward

A Naruto Three-Shot

Chapter 1: 'October 9th'

Peace.

For a hidden village in the world of shinobi, the word was one that fell from the lips of people as but a dream for the future, a farfetched desire that very few could achieve. Times of the modern age had made some figures wonder just what would have to be done to achieve any kind of civil relationship that wasn't instigated through bloodshed. Peace, as a word, is vague unless specified to an area. Could it mean world peace? Momentary peace, such as when one lies upon soft grassland and gazes towards the sky without a care for the world before its reality is thrust back into their lap? Internal peace, where one's inner demons are finally resolved through self or third party action? Such a simple word…so many different implementations.

In today's age, only two words were needed to explain the peace that had blanketed civilisation for the past year-and-a-half: Uzumaki Naruto. The teenage shinobi from Konohagakure, Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi no Youko, and a potential future candidate for the position of Rokudaime Hokage. Even now, it amazed the villagers that the once loud, idiotic knucklehead with fetishes for the colour orange and ramen had brought about a new era of diplomacy between once warring countries and opened new relations with villages that had once held violent vendettas for the actions of legends passed.

But what kind of event had happened to allow this once hated young man to stop the seemingly never ending violence and bring about this harmonious age? In reality, it was two people, and two different events.

The first person was the man that had brought about the horrific event that almost destroyed Naruto's home village and took the life of its most honoured Hokage and his lover. He was the man that had turned Naruto's best friend into a murderer and mindless avenger. Lastly, he was the man that started the Fourth Shinobi War, which itself was one of the two aforementioned events.

Uchiha Madara. Even the mere utterance of the murderer's name made the blonde shinobi's jaw clench shut in anger.

The Fourth Shinobi War had already been and gone. While it lasted a grand total of only eight months, the Allies' losses were tremendous. There was only so much that could be done against one hundred thousand Zetsu clones, which themselves had a higher damage threshold than a normal human and unbelievable skill to boot. Combine them with the reanimated members of Akatsuki and Madara himself…it would take every moment of strategy, concentration and determination for the Allied shinobi to stop from succumbing.

It was during the end of the eighth month that Madara's patience broke, and he initiated a solo head-on attack on Naruto's new hiding location near the location of the once prosperous Uzushiogakure…his mother's home village. Interestingly enough, Naruto had not been permitted to return to Konoha after initially usurping his destructive tenant of its chakra, instead he was repeatedly moved to new hideouts away from the fighting so that he could not be found or, at worst, captured. The resulting fight had created a whole new landscape of charred earth and deep craters that would require a redraw of all world and local maps, as well as destroying two abandoned settlements from the shockwaves of some of the massive attacks that had been used.

The explosions and inhuman battle cries raged on for three hours before one final, massive sphere of purple enveloped a stretch of coastline two kilometres from the nearest Allied squad, a small platoon belonging to the Fourth Division, the long range combat specialists.

Excerpt from a surveillance report, written by an Allied Jounin:

"_Stood in a twenty-metre deep and one-hundred-metre wide crater of black and burnt earth was a…I would probably be wrong to call it a man…enveloped in chakra flames of bright orange. It was easy to tell from his swaying stance that he was on the brink of collapsing, but still looked to stand tall over the figure lying by his (its?) feet. The darkness of night almost made us blind to the dark colours the second body wore, but none of us had trouble in telling that the second person would not be getting up…considering there was only half of them left…literally…"_

Further according to the report, which was corroborated by accounts written by the other squad members - including both Nara Shikamaru and Subaku no Temari - the entity covered in orange flames collapsed as they closed in to confirm the situation. They had quickly identified both bodies as that of Uchiha Madara and Uzumaki Naruto.

The former: Confirmed deceased after extensive and multiple tests. Body incinerated and ashes spread in six different locations across three countries. The latter: Unconscious and bed-ridden back in his home village for three weeks due to extreme chakra exhaustion, even when backed up by the chakra of the Kyuubi.

It was the first time in eight months that Naruto's friends had seen him. Before he left, they had barely any idea of neither where he was going nor what he was doing. So it was no surprise that upon regaining consciousness he was verbally berated by Tsunade for his recklessness, and physically slapped by the…once proclaimed…love of his life, Haruno Sakura, for making her and the rest of their friends worry themselves to proverbial near death. The week after Naruto's return, the word had reached every ear in the village that their jinchuuriki had gained full control over his literal inner demon. The remaining 7 members of the Konoha 11 (Sasuke and Naruto not included) were, to say the least, stunned. An amazed reaction from Hyuuga Hinata was expected, as was the same from Rock Lee, but everybody had to do a double take at how both Sakura and even Yamanaka Ino seemed awestruck into silence by the revelation that Naruto was now, in essence, more powerful than any of the world's kages.

Thus, the Fourth Shinobi War ended, and the leaders of the Allied nations and villages all vouched to remain in said alliance for the sake of future peace. Peace on a grand scale was achieved…thanks to Naruto. However, his own search for internal peace had one more battle to partake in: The fight to retrieve Uchiha Sasuke.

It was that one promise that hung over him like a single plaguing rain cloud. It was an unnecessary weight that had gradually sunk him further into the ground over the years, and its effect on his own patience had shone through when the young avenger directly attacked Konoha on his own. What he once thought to be a deep connection of friendship with the – now last - Uchiha, Naruto suddenly realised had twisted and transformed into a dark, underlying hatred.

However, it was now the week in which Konohagakure had its own internal war...against Naruto himself.

The current date: October 9th.

Tomorrow, it would be the hero's eighteenth birthday. Now when one thinks of the coming-of-age milestone, images of alcohol, dancing, _lots_ of socialising and even more if the beneficiary got lucky come to one's mind. But for the jinchuuriki, it was none of those things. In fact, it was the total opposite. It was Naruto's plan, much like every year, to stay as isolated as possible between the 8th and 12th of every October so that the individuals that still lived in the past could simmer angrily without any problems to themselves, Naruto, or any bystanders. The irony of the situation sang all too loud for Naruto in a familiar and derogatory tune. The annual festival was implemented to celebrate the 'death' of the Nine-Tailed Fox, a 'death' that a less-than-two-hour-old Naruto had helped to achieve. It was this simple fact that lead to his father's dying wish: that his son be hailed as a hero, one who through great strength and courage would keep the demon at bay.

'_So much for that plan…'_ The blonde mentally huffed to himself as he looked out over his home from the top of the Yondaime's massive head of stone, _'Sorry, Tou-chan. But some of these idiots still refuse to let go of the past.'_

That much was true. But that didn't mean that the situation hadn't changed for the better. As the years moved on, more and more people became sympathetic to Naruto's cause, and those who looked at the good the blonde had done would quietly commend him for putting up with his…burden. It also made Naruto curious as to how people would approach him once his heritage was let out of the bag. The young blonde had discussed it with the Hokage, and after much deliberation, they agreed to reveal just whose son he was on his eighteenth birthday…tomorrow. But in order to not make such a large spectacle of it, they decided upon slowly letting the news trickle out. First to Naruto's friends and other close acquaintances, and from there the word would only spread throughout the village, upon which Tsunade would have no choice but to confirm or deny any rumours that sprung up in the mean time. On top of that, Naruto knew he had friends, but his selfless side kept telling them to enjoy the festival instead of hang around him in his cramped apartment.

On the matter of friends, there was one person that had begun to interact with Naruto far more than others over the course of the past year. The thing that made his increase in popularity with this person less believable was that she was one of the first people Naruto had pegged would ignore him and chase Sasuke once he had been retrieved.

This young woman, however, was not Sakura as some would have thought. It was her rival in the chase for Sasuke's heart: Yamakana Ino.

Their first proper interaction was a tense one. Naruto had actively, and rather loudly confronted Sakura over a love confession she had made in the Land of Iron soon after the war had been declared. Long story short: Naruto lost quite a bit of trust in Sakura thereafter, she was still his friend, but she had been shoved down the list of closest friends to the extent that she knew how much it damaged their once unbreakable bond. Sakura was naturally upset at Naruto's outburst, and confided in Ino. Within an hour, the two blondes ended up exchanging harsh words at training ground 3, words that eventually turned into a no-holds-barred sparring match. The things that they said to one another before, during, and after their confrontation had built new levels of understanding between them. Naruto saw the romantic and physical insecurities that birthed Ino's mask of outer confidence; while Ino saw how Naruto held a saddening loneliness and desire for somebody to love him like he had loved Sakura. On top of that, they could also share their feelings over the loss of a close friend and mentor of one kind or another: Ino lost Asuma and Naruto lost Jiraiya, it was one of the few pieces of common ground that they shared, but it was enough to start. After inadvertently opening themselves up to - and finding confidants in - one another, the two blondes strove for an active friendship.

It was currently nearing one o'clock in the afternoon, and the mass of people trudging through the streets below looked like uniformly marching ant colonies as they carried all sorts of decorations and equipment in preparation for the next day's festival.

The whole situation brought mixed feelings from the demon container. On the one hand he was pleased that it was a time that could bring all the villagers together…well, all but one. And that was the exact reason as to why he didn't like the festival window; the stares, the whispers, the occasional drunk who had nothing to live on bar memories and plots of vengeance. Regrettably, the blonde teen had already been forced to run away from one of those people a few hours ago.

"I wonder if baa-chan did anything about that request of mine…" Naruto quietly pondered in enough of a volume so that he could hear himself over the wind that whooped past his ears, blowing his face-length bangs of sunshine blonde hair back across his mouth.

The once annoying, noisy and immature little squirt that everybody looked down upon – mostly due to his size at the time – had now grown into a tall and rather striking man, enough so that he had caught the eyes of numerous women equal to, below, and even above his own age. Naruto's sharp jaw line, piercing cerulean eyes and lengthened hairstyle of exuberant bright yellow were the main features that adorned his head, which topped off his toned 5'11" body. Even as his body grew and his mentality matured, he would refuse to leave his apartment if he didn't have at least some form of orange on his clothing. While almost everybody thought it to be because of his obsession with the colour as a child (which was partially true), he also wore it as a permanent tribute to the two people he knew loved him the most: his parents, Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina, the 'Yellow Flash' and 'Bloody Habanero' respectively. Though at the moment, Naruto himself was the only person who knew of this reason, and he hoped that within the next few weeks that would no longer be the case. The modern Naruto's get-up comprised of a short-sleeved cloak that flapped around his ankles, similar to the Hokage's, but the body was black and the flames around the hems of the sleeves and cloak were a conventional orange, slightly darker than his two original jumpsuits. He kept the standard dark blue shinobi sandals, above which was a pair of black pants with tape wrapped, as usual, around the right thigh; both legs had a long strip of the same orange tint running down the side seams. His first upper layer was a finely woven, long-sleeved mesh shirt underneath a seemingly tight fitting and long-sleeved navy blue muscle shirt. A green Jounin vest, however, restricted the view of the shirt.

It even surprised the jinchuuriki that only six months ago he was still a Genin. But Sasuke's surprise attack, born out of the avenger's hate and arrogant belief that his own power was enough to annihilate an entire village, forced Naruto into a higher position of authority. At the time, Naruto had been approximately ten miles to the north of the village, training in solitude in his full jinchuuriki form to maintain secrecy. By the time an ANBU had found the blonde and ordered him to report to the Hokage, half of the southeastern quarter of Konoha had been reduced to debris and corpses. Naruto had basically destroyed the door connecting the Hokage's office to the corridor outside in a mix of anger and impatience, determination flaring in his eyes. Even though Tsunade hadn't yet explained anything, Naruto claimed that he had felt an overwhelming wave of negative emotion whilst in his chakra form. Tsunade explained the situation, fully aware that the man she viewed as a younger brother wanted to stop the last Uchiha by himself, as well as the danger that would come with the order she was about to give him. Even to the current day, Naruto could remember the words Tsunade had said to him in the office, syllable for syllable.

'_I am giving you only one order: Stop Uchiha Sasuke by any means necessary. Whether you kill him or not is completely up to you, but either way, he _must_ be stopped. If possible, and I know you'll try your best at this one, apprehend him alive for interrogation. Finally, because of the unfaltering determination you have shown in training and missions, your unwavering loyalty to both the village and its people in your service career to date, and your high level of skill as a shinobi in multiple areas…I am enforcing Konohagakure Wartime Decree number sixty-two, subsection B. Uzumaki Naruto, you have now been temporarily field promoted to Jounin. If you successfully quash this attack and subdue the perpetrator, I may decide to make the promotion permanent. Now GO!'_

Naruto made well on his promise to Sakura, Sasuke and himself on that day. However, only two people knew exactly what happened during the three-hour gap between the time in which Naruto forcibly led Sasuke away from the village and eventually walked through the gates with an unconscious Uchiha over his shoulder, teetering on the precipice of consciousness himself. Those two people were none other than…Naruto and Sasuke. Despite the explosions that could be heard to the north and the occasional inhuman wail (which most believed to be from Sasuke's Susanoo), the Hokage forbade anybody but Naruto from engaging the village's attacker. While the fact that Naruto had successfully stopped Sasuke made the peoples' mouths gape open in awe, they were befuddled as to how Naruto forced the Uchiha out of the village in the first place. Some shinobi actually bore witness to Naruto's technique, but it was almost indescribable. The two most credible reports came from Hagane Kotetsu and ANBU veteran Uzuki Yuugao, and they both used exactly the same words:

"Naruto teleported the both of them away."

'Teleported' was quite the extreme word. Very few shinobi had any knowledge of advanced space-time transportation jutsu; Kakashi had Kamui, Madara had an advanced version of that, and the Yondaime Hokage had his Hiraishin, but that was where the list dramatically thinned out.

Only a select few people knew the identity of Naruto's father. The first was Tsunade, who knew because Jiraiya would never shut his trap over how proud he was that his best student would be having a child. The second and third, sadly, were Koharu and Homura. On the up side, both council elders – somewhat reluctantly – agreed to keep quiet until a necessary time after the next tenth of October. Naruto's heritage became yet another secretive conversation topic between the four after the end of the war, and it concluded with Tsunade willingly handing over Minato's technique scrolls, scrolls that rightfully belonged in the possession of his son and not the village. This was the main reason for Naruto's hidden training area. He would travel by foot to get there at first, and after three months of constant revision of the same three scrolls and accompanying prototype kunai, Naruto managed to transport himself from one side of the training field to the other. Slowly but surely, the maximum travel distance increased, as did Naruto's skill with the intricately shaped kunai in both combat and beacon proximity sensing. Almost instant transport from seal to seal was not the only advantage of the kunai, if the user were to concentrate hard enough on one specific seal, they could sense nearby shinobi presences by their chakra. In order to avoid suspicion, Tsunade made a request to a weapons maker in an undisclosed village in Wind country to create a second Hiraishin kunai minus the seal. Once obtained, Naruto used both kunai as a means of quick travel between Konoha and his personal training ground. What the shinobi witnessed on that day was the jinchuuriki taking Sasuke away from Konoha by way of the Hiraishin in order to save the village from further danger.

The next day, Tsunade was asked on more than one occasion as to how Naruto 'teleported' the way he did. She played the simpleton act and denied any knowledge of the matter, playing the technique off as something Naruto learned during his time with Killer B. Naruto spent three days recovering in the hospital under almost constant watch by three of his four favourite medics: Tsunade, Shizune, and Ino. Why the latter focussed on him so much was something that puzzled Naruto even in the present. He was half expecting both her and Sakura to immediately forget he existed, since Sasuke was being held in a secure room guarded by no less than eight elite ANBU, six inside and two outside. Ino at least had the sense to tell Naruto of her desire to continue being his friend despite his scepticism, she even admitted to having lost her feelings towards the Uchiha, mostly because she had the misfortune of watching him burn a civilian house to the ground…with the family still inside it.

Naruto's friendliness towards Sakura, on the other hand, had deteriorated. Ever since he felt used by the one he loved, he began to lose more and more respect for the kunoichi, and the fact she tried to kill Sasuke behind his back only sought to make his feelings worse. As well as himself, Naruto was also bringing Sasuke back for her, his promise constantly weighing him down. With that weight now lifted, he felt free. Besides, he was pretty confident in his belief, even stubbornly so, that Sakura was now out of reach, that she would put up a massive 'Sasuke only' barrier around herself once again, but he was sure that would have happened anyway. It was one of the reasons he aimed to get the Uchiha back in the first place. Sasuke's return would make Sakura happy, and in response, Naruto would feel happy as well.

On the contrary, Naruto surprised everybody around him when he unceremoniously dumped Sasuke's bloodied and bruised body at the feet of two young women without a single hint of a smile or happy visage; they were the two young women he believed would contend for the traitor once again. He quietly said a few words to both of them and simply walked away; words that only those in closest proximity would hear, words that made both medics show a wince through their eyes…words to clearly show that the jinchuuriki no longer cared. He didn't bother looking behind him when he laboriously limped in the direction of the Hokage tower, everybody looking on in shock-induced silence; if he did, he would have seen Sakura staring at his kunai-pierced back with rapidly tearing eyes, almost completely ignoring the limp sack of meat lying by her ankles.

Naruto quickly opened his eyes and focussed on the horizon, hoping to let something else occupy his mind before he started thinking of Sakura once again. He preferred not to have his mind burdened by the girl he still admittedly had a small amount of feelings for, but every time he thought of or saw her face, he kept seeing the lips attached to it confess a fake love. He should have been happy once she said those three words; he knew he should, but there were so many things about her body language that screamed insincerity. It was always about Sasuke, he made that promise so that he could bring Sasuke back to her. But from what Naruto had heard, Sakura hadn't gone to the Interrogation and Torture building at all, where Sasuke was currently held day and night, and had been for the past six months. Naruto didn't know Sakura's reasons, but her lack of drive to talk to Sasuke was making the blonde impatient.

The blonde teen's sigh was lost on the wind as he brought his left hand up to his mouth and sharply bit on his thumb. Swiping the small amount of seeping blood across his right palm and bringing both hands together in front of his chest, he quickly flashed through five hand signs.

"Kuchiyose no jutsu", he said in a firm but calm tone as his right hand landed flat on the stone of the Hokage Monument. The following smoke plume briefly covered Naruto's vision, indicating a successful summon and for the blonde to retract his hand. As the smoke cleared, he looked down at his feet and saw a toad similar to the size of a young Gamakichi. Its body was red with three blue markings surrounding the face, and around its neck was a small pair of goggles almost like those Naruto used before he received his hitai-ate.

"Hey Naruto!" The small toad happily shouted up to its summoner. Naruto smiled at the cheeriness of his company. Ever since he had become a fully trained sage, Naruto tried his best to maintain relations with the majority of the summoned toads, and not just those who seemed the most effective in a battle. Aside from Gamabunta and his children, Fukasaku and Shima, the sage did his best to interact more with summons like Gamahiro, Gamaken and the little messenger now sat smiling at his feet.

"'Sup Kosuke-san?" Naruto nodded in greeting and quickly stooped down to just above his summons' height, sitting down and crossing his legs. Despite the major height difference – amongst many other differences – Naruto always made sure to show proper respect to those who trusted him with their contract, hence the honorific. The messenger toad put his…hands…up in a 'don't know' gesture, palms facing upwards.

"Ehh, this and that. But I can't say I'm not surprised that the great sage Naruto would choose to summon me at such a time of such a wonderful day." The toad spoke in a light-hearted tone and took a second to look over the sun-soaked Konohagakure landscape, admiring how almost nothing was left in shadow. The little toad enjoyed the imagery, but it had taken time to re-accustom himself to it. After all, Danzo killed the poor guy during Pain's invasion. Even after Nagato's jutsu managed to resurrect him, he refused to leave Myobokuzan for a very long period of time, even defiantly returning home the second he found himself summoned inside Konoha limits. Eventually, Fukasaku put the figurative boot in and forced the worried messenger to stay in the Hokage's office for a week. Soon enough, Kosuke started to return to normal, even though the office, his place of death, still made him slightly nervous to that day. Naruto followed Kosuke's eyeline and took a moment to soak in the sight of the village once again.

"I simply have a favour to ask of you", Naruto began as he reached behind his back with his right hand, leaving his left to rest on his knee. Kosuke looked on patiently as he saw the hand come back into view holding a long object. Upon making out its shape, his eyes widened and he brought his mouth into as much of an 'O' shape as his absence of lips would allow.

"Oooh", Kosuke let out the noise in surprise. He looked back up Naruto, locking their eyes to one another's once again.

"Would you mind going to Tsunade baa-chan and telling her I'll be paying her a visit? It doesn't matter if she's got company; just tell her she's got thirty seconds." He handed the object over to the awestruck toad. He had heard his fellow kin talk about Naruto being in possession of such an object, but he had yet to confirm it with his own eyes. Slowly, the toad reached out and took the sleek piece of metal, quickly bringing it into a tight hold so as not to drop it.

"No problem! See you in half a minute!" With that farewell and a short wave, the place in which the toad stood was replaced with more thick smoke and thin air soon after that. On his own once more, Naruto looked to the Hokage tower below and briefly pondered what his 'big sister' would be up to around this time. Quickly concentrating, he began to feel chakra responses from the object now inside his room of destination.

'_Tsunade baa-chan…Ino-chan? And…_' His small smile slowly dropped, "Great…" He huffed once again with a crooked frown. Keeping his mental countdown going, Naruto propped himself onto one knee, placing his arm on his right thigh and preparing to make his move.

"Three…two…one…"

In as much time it took to blink, Naruto was no longer on top of the monument; vanished, as if he dissipated into thin air.

* * *

"So you've already started work on an antidote?"

The Godaime Hokage was sat at her desk looking at a data chart on the heart rate of a hospitalised shinobi. From the sharp peaks and troughs in the chart, the patient's BPM early on was horrendously high and never dropping, it was equivalent to someone undergoing intense physical exercise. According to the two kunoichi giving the report, a poison in the patient's bloodstream was forcing their heart to deliberately overwork itself into premature failure. Fortunately, the two medics in question had successfully driven the poison towards a non-lethal artery and physically purged it from their system. A large enough sample was retrieved to leave only trace amounts inside the patient, and also enough to start examining the toxins so that an antidote could be formulated.

"Hai. Based on the simple enzyme and glycoside structure of the poison, it shouldn't be too hard to reverse engineer to find a suitable countermeasure. If I'm honest, Tsunade-sama, I'm surprised we haven't come across such a simple concoction in combat before." Tsunade listened attentively with an equally focussed stare as she looked over the sheet in front of her to pay attention to the first (and admittedly better) of her two apprentices.

Haruno Sakura had grown into a woman with a beauty befitting her literal name, despite still being six-and-a-bit months away from turning eighteen. Over the course of a year she had gained a few inches, just like her teammates, and also filled out slightly more in her hip and chest area. She had let her vivid pink hair grow so it now ended between her shoulder blades. Her pink-fabric hitai-ate was still in its usual place, tied over the top of her head so that her bangs framed her face, the bangs themselves coming down to her collarbones. Because this day was one of her shifts at the hospital, Sakura had taken to wearing her standard medic outfit of half-thigh-length purple skirt, beige t-shirt and dark red tank top.

Stood at Sakura's side was Tsunade's second apprentice down the ladder rungs, Yamanaka Ino. Just like Sakura, time did nothing but accentuate and greaten her beauty, but that was mostly attributable to still being in her teen years. While she kept the same hairstyle and clothing that had worked for her since she turned fifteen, she had also filled out to look like a goddess reborn. It was no surprise to anyone that she was one of the most chased after girls in the village, but it was also no surprise that she had a tendency to harshly shoot down those who thought they were something special.

Well…there _was_ one guy Ino had considered accepting – on numerous times at that – should he ever show a more than friendly interest in her. He didn't have black hair, a permanent grimace on his face, or a monotone voice. No, this man was loud, blonde like her, very active, permanently smiling, fun to boss around, and one of the best listeners and comforters she had ever come to know.

Before her daydreaming went any further and made her face muscles slacken in laziness, the current conversation in the office was sharply cut by the 'poofing' sound and smoke plume created only by a summon. The small plume on the portion of the desk to Tsunade's right cleared, revealing a Fukasaku-sized red and blue toad protectively holding a long metallic object to its chest. Both Hokage and toad stared each other down for but a few short seconds before the higher authority spoke up.

"Can I help you, Kosuke-san?" Tsunade threw the medical chart on to the desk and instead opted to link her fingers together in her trademark pondering position, raising an eyebrow suspiciously. She remembered having to put up with the little creature's nervous quibbles as it was forced to sit in her office for a week as it re-accustomed itself to being in the room in which it was once killed. There was still some slight nervousness in the toad's eyes that she could see; either, she figured, it was the room or her sharp gaze.

"Eh, forgive the interruption Hokage-sama, but Naruto sent me ahead with this." At his sentence's end, Kosuke held out the object his summoner had handed him. While Ino and Sakura had looked towards each other, no doubt to complain about the toad's tenacity to butt in on their discussion, their heads were immediately snapped back as Naruto's name was mentioned. Tsunade looked at the object with indifference, but it's dark grey glossy finish and yellow handle had caught the eyes of both young kunoichi stood before the desk.

Ino and Sakura took an inquisitive step forward, curiosity controlling their movements, in order to see the object better. The triple-bladed kunai glinted in the afternoon sun, further emphasising the smooth body of the handle and the outer sections of the blades. The actual blades themselves were a much lighter grey, worked over and over in a furnace and folded until an edge so sharp that it could cut air had been achieved. Both girls had puzzled looks on their faces as their eyes looked along the handle to see complex calligraphy written vertically between the hilt and loop. Even as Tsunade's calm grasp claimed the kunai, the girls' eyes never left it.

"I see…" Tsunade's smug tone shook the kunoichi from their stupor and forced their views back to her, eyebrows crooked from a mix of confusion and curiosity.

"How long?" Tsunade looked back at Kosuke after taking a moment to admire the weapon herself. The summons turned its eyes towards the ceiling in thought.

"I'd say about another ten seconds, give or take." Nodding in acceptance, Tsunade looked back to her protégés and felt her resistance against an emerging snicker crumbling away as she saw yet more confusion written across their faces. Tsunade waved for the two girls in front of her to move to the side, which, for some reason, they obeyed without question nor argument.

"Typical Naruto, he can't even wait until after tomorrow to start showing this off", the Hokage cryptically - at least to her company - said before forcing the point of the kunai into the desk. Removing her grip, the kunai stood completely vertical on its own, using the desk as its anchor. Sakura minutely raised her hand like she would have done in her academy years.

"Er, Shishou…what are you talki-" Sakura quickly stifled her question as Tsunade raised her hand for silence. The Hokage kept her eyes pasted on the floor space in front of the desk, the floor space that the two medics had occupied mere seconds before. Sakura dropped her hand, as well as her shoulders, with a nasal sigh before looking outside the windows behind her master. The colour of the sunlight streaming into the room through the glass kept reminding the pinkette of a certain teammate's hair.

'_Naruto…'_ Sakura's eyes subconsciously drifted to the floor as that soul-lifting and over-toothy smile appeared before her mind's eye, an image that had swam inside her head for almost a year now. It actually hurt the young woman to realise and admit to herself that while Naruto's admiration of her had taken a steep drop because of her actions just less than two years before, her admiration of him had grown significantly. She let her head hang in minor upset before remembering that she was in the company of others. She had plenty of time to think to herself later. As she looked back to Tsunade, she saw the busty Hokage having a staring contest with the floor, and looked over to the spot roughly indicated by her master's gaze.

With no forewarning, no sound, no visual hint of any kind …the floor space supporting nothing but air was suddenly supporting the weight of everybody's favourite knucklehead. The way his coat flapped and quickly but calmly wrapped around his back gave the illusion of an indoor gust, the nonexistent chill of which seemed to make the hair on Sakura's neck stand on end. What a coincidence it must have been for the object of her immediate thoughts to have instantly appeared in front of her.

Wait…how did he do that, exactly?

Ino was in as much of a state as her friend. Finding her fellow blonde absent from the room one millisecond and seeing him right in front of her eyes the next caused her to question her internal clock. Because of that, she thought she had fallen asleep with her eyes open while Naruto had walked through the door and randomly crouched in the middle of the office.

While the pair of young medics on the right side of the room looked on in silence, comprehending just how in the world Naruto made his entrance, the teenager in question had already given them a quick glance and was now flashing a peeved pout in the direction of the village leader.

"Baa-chaaaan", Naruto let the title drone out like a child's whine, "I wanted to make it look at least a bit cool. Getting everybody to stand on ceremony and wait just kills all the fun!" Ignoring the fact that one of her best shinobi just complained to her like a crybaby, Tsunade looked more at the positive part of the reunion and smiled at her 'little brother's' playful face. She didn't see Kosuke turn to face Naruto and raise his hand.

"But Naruto, you kind of made it obvious by sending me." Naruto's cold glare promptly forced the toad into making the wise decision of closing its mouth.

"I was hoping you'd at least exercise some basic knowledge of stealth", Naruto murmured under his breath, deciding to remain knelt on the floor.

"Says the guy who runs head first into every battle", Kosuke crossed his arms and fired a distasteful frown back at his summoner. Naruto shot up and took a single step in the direction of the cheeky toad, faux bloody murder written across his face.

"Why, you-", Naruto begun, but his attempt at an insult was thrown off by Tsunade's commanding tone.

"Enough!" Even when the tone sounded powerful and most certainly movement halting, Tsunade's fingers were still linked together and supporting her chin as if she were quietly listening to a verbal mission report. Naruto, intelligent enough to stay away from an unnecessary argument, did the first thing that came to his mind…he pouted again. Tsunade looked totally unfazed by the blonde's antics, and sought to include her other company – both of whom happened to be looking at Naruto with a look between surprise and exasperation – in the shifting conversation.

"Naruto, I'm in the middle of a meeting right now. Couldn't this have waited until a time that was more convenient?" Tsunade made the obvious hint by pointing out the two kunoichi on Naruto's right, which in turn made the blonde look across and meet two pairs of eyes: one jade and one teal.

As he looked over Ino, the young man could feel his shoulders relax. Ever since their first fistfight nearly two years ago, Naruto had become a much closer friend to his fellow blonde. Although the pair didn't have much time to talk before Naruto was shipped off to control his tenant, they found plenty of time after the war's end to catch up and further their knowledge of each other; but even then Naruto was unsure as to how he was suddenly on such good speaking terms with the co-founder of the Sasuke Fan Club. Initially he pinned it down to their common ground of losing a sensei, but soon they came to enjoy the shenanigans that came with their clashes in personality. Ino, much like Sakura, had the ability to put Naruto in his place (usually with a fist), but Naruto always seemed to make the experience fun by means of his unpredictability and minor immaturity.

Naruto's eyes caught a red object sitting in Ino's hair over her left temple. It was a rose. A single blood red rose that healthily stood out as if Ino's scalp itself were a fertilised flowerbed. The imagery, and the memory behind the rose, caused Naruto to smile, but he tried to pass it off as a smile of greeting before giving a small wave in the girls' direction.

"Hi, Ino-chan", Naruto said in a cheerful tone that certainly didn't reflect a care for the fact that he'd just figuratively barged into the Hokage's office and broken up a meeting. Ino, still dumbfounded by the fact that Naruto had just teleported into the room, could only flicker a smile along with a nervous chuckle and a minute wave in return. But it wasn't just Naruto's sudden appearance that made her laugh in such a way.

From a woman's perspective, Naruto, to put it simply, was hot. His skin was completely unblemished and maintained a light bronze tan. His elongated canines flashed with every smile, and only sought to bring out an animalistic look when combined with his whisker marks that screamed danger. His sapphire eyes shone brighter than the world's oceans, and contrasted beautifully with his shining blonde locks. Although his Jounin vest restricted the view of his body, everybody could get the jist of his build from his arms, the muscles of which flowed with each movement underneath his tight shirt. His coat only served to make him look bigger and more intimidating, which in itself was quite an attractive perk. Somewhere along the line, Ino had found herself looking at Naruto in this way more and more, which explained the extremely faint and almost unnoticeable blush that spread across her cheekbones.

Knowing she was already in the room, Naruto looked to acknowledge the other girl that he had yet to address: his teammate and…friend. He couldn't peg as to why, but Sakura held a small smile that, joined with her upturned eyebrows, made her face appear like it was holding a look of hope.

"Hey there, Sakura", Naruto's voice had lost a lot of its excited tone, but it was still cheerful enough to sound legitimate. Naruto took no time in looking back to his Hokage, but not before stealing a glance at Ino, a glance that wasn't lost on any of the females in the room…especially the one with pink hair. If he had paid any attention to Sakura's face after his less-than-enthusiastic greeting, he would have seen it twist with apparent hurt and her eyes fall to the floor. It was obvious to everyone how the tension between the pair had remained taut since Sakura laid down her false confession, so much so that Naruto hadn't added the 'chan' suffix to his teammate's name for almost fifteen months.

Tsunade caught the temporary fall of Sakura's pleasant visage, and it made her pity the young woman; not from the perspective of a damaged friendship, however, but because both medics _knew_ a certain piece of information that Naruto had stubbornly and subconsciously refused to believe. Tsunade could only watch her apprentice face Naruto with the all too familiar look of longing, but remain silent. All the Hokage could do was sigh as she knew Naruto wouldn't turn up for no reason; she rubbed her forehead with her right hand, closing her eyes in the meantime.

"Is there something I can help you with, Naruto?" She asked with a tired expression, "While I'd love to just chat and procrastinate on the paperwork, I do have other important matters to attend to." Naruto swiftly dropped the smile and adopted a serious business face.

"I won't beat about the bush, then", Naruto looked out the window behind Tsunade and could still make out civilians erecting stalls in the streets and putting up hanging lanterns in preparation for the coming celebrations. He sighed at the image; while he was glad it was a time that the villagers could be happy, he didn't like how the happiness came with the price of his own physical well being.

"And I'm not going to pretend that you don't know what kind of things are waiting outside for me just like every other year." Fully aware of what Naruto was referring to, Tsunade frowned in anger, anger at the villagers; Sakura and Ino, meanwhile just sighed and let a wince show through their eyes. Naruto quickly brought them back to the present as he made his enquiry.

"In light of that, have you and the old geezers made any decision about my…request?" Tsunade narrowed her eyes in reluctance. Aside from keeping Naruto's parentage a secret for the meanwhile, the Yondaime's son had also made a single negotiable request regarding his personal safety. Just to sway the potential decision that Tsunade and the two council elders would come to, Naruto subtly insisted that he would go along with his idea even without permission, regardless of the penalty.

"It just so happens that those old bags gave in. Consider yourself lucky, brat." Tsunade kept her right hand under her chin whilst reaching across to a draw on her left with the other. She pulled out a single thin scroll, indicating only a small amount of paper was necessary for…whatever was written on it.

"But know this." She let out in a low and menacing tone, "If you go over the top with this, I will be forced to demote and even suspend you." With one swipe of her arm, the scroll was flying across the room in a gentle arc with a small amount of spin. Naruto's hand was already in place to catch the airborne scroll without having to ever take his eyes off the Hokage. His sight shifted from Tsunade and down to the scroll as he unwrapped and unrolled it with two fast movements of his right hand. Ino and Sakura watched silently but curiously as Naruto's eyes scanned over the three paragraphs of writing before he quickly sealed it back up to stop anybody from reading over his shoulder.

"Got it…" was all Naruto said before he slid the scroll inside his left pants pocket.

"I mean it, Naruto. You can get in a lot of trouble if you're reckless." Tsunade spoke authoritatively. Naruto waived the warning off with the flick off his wrist.

"I said I got it, baa-chan." Tsunade's eyebrow twitched at the repetition of the nickname; but even though it annoyed her, it was one thing that made Naruto special to her. She took a second to look at her 'little brother' and couldn't believe how similar he looked to his father, their hair was almost exactly the same style, his eyes were of equal if not better vivacity, and he even managed to hold the same bright smile. She could make the comparison easily because a picture of Namikaze Minato had been hung up on the office wall to her right, near the door for the sake of the festival. Speaking of Namikaze…

"Oh," Tsunade's eyes widened slightly before she fished through the same drawer in her desk, gnawing on her bottom lip in concentration. She pulled out an almost identical scroll with a small smile and noted Naruto's name across the lip opening. She quickly shot a mischievous look towards Sakura and Ino before throwing the scroll at an almost unaware jinchuuriki. Naruto, taken by surprise, moved his upper body as if to dodge a flying kunai, but caught the scroll in his left hand nonetheless. The blonde teenager saw his name on the second scroll and used his raised eyebrow to ask the obvious question of _'What's this?'_

"Homura and Koharu came to me with this little proposition; I suggest you read it and have a good think about it." She made out the obvious scepticism on Naruto's features, and sought to ease his uncertainty, "It's not an order, consider it more of a…suggestion of sorts. You don't have to do anything about it if you don't want to; but take it from me, it's probably worth a thought." Naruto shrugged his shoulders and nodded, not bothering to read the scroll before pocketing it.

"Right, I'm heading home." Naruto sighed dejectedly, taking a moment to look at the floor before turning around. "I guess I'll see you all in a few days, then." Just as Naruto set off, he looked up to see a portrait headshot of the Yondaime. Quickly stopping, Naruto turned to face the framed image and quietly stared at it for at least twenty seconds before speaking up. To Sakura and Ino, who had yet to know about the link, it looked like their friend was silently juggling his thoughts and opinions about the man who put the burden of the Kyuubi upon him in the first place. Was he angry, honoured, upset? The best they could do was assume. Naruto spoke up, but kept his blue eyes locked onto those of his father in the picture.

"Ne, baa-chan." Tsunade already had an idea as to where Naruto was going to go with this. Her eyes were already focussed on the side of Naruto's face, and she allowed him to continue without any objection.

"How d'you think Tou-chan would feel…if he found out just how badly his village treated his own son, and all because of something the boy had no control over?" Even though Naruto asked the question as if it were common knowledge, time for both of Tsunade's apprentices seemed to permanently freeze. The girls' expressions mirrored one another's: mouths agape, arms hanging limply by their sides and looking on with unblinking eyes as they numbly stared at Naruto's back.

'_**Oh, no.'**_ Inner Sakura's panic button had suddenly swollen to three times its original size and flashed in neon red, somewhat imitating the paranoid frenzy she had suddenly become engrossed in. _**'Please don't tell me…all these years…we…we've been beating up Yondaime-sama's son! Oh, Kami help me! We're gonna have to reap what we sow!' **_The surprise seemed to have an even bigger effect on Ino, mostly because her own verbal thought process had just been erased. She couldn't even think about the situation in words.

Naruto, paying no attention to the shocked girls behind him, turned his head and sought out Tsunade's gaze. Tsunade's eyes fell to her desk in thought, but the list of answers she had started to put together was stopped by Naruto's continuance.

"He didn't say much about it to me. But if I had to guess, I'd say he'd be like the parent who found out his kid broke a precious vase or something. He'd be disappointed, maybe angry as well, but what else could he do? The past is the past, after all." Tsunade understood what Naruto meant. In basic terms, what had happened was what had happened, and there was no way in reversing time to change it; it basically took the phrase 'No use crying over spilt milk' to the extreme. Naruto shrugged his shoulders again and left for the door without a word. Just as his arm extended towards the handle, Naruto called out with another cheerful tone.

"See you around baa-chan!" Once Naruto's feet passed the threshold and he walked out of the office, Sakura turned to face Tsunade. She had just watched her teammate walk out the door without saying a word; what kind of friend did that make her? Not to mention it was Naruto's birthday tomorrow, and she felt that the least she could do was offer her support.

"Tsunade-sama, may I be excused?" Sakura's eyes clearly told the Hokage that she was more than eager to leave, not so that she could flunk her duties, but because she needed – almost desperately at that – to talk to her teammate. Tsunade flashed a sympathetic smile before waving the two girls off.

"I think our business was finished anyway. Good work, you two." As Tsunade leaned back into her chair to have a small moment of relaxation, she saw the speed at which Sakura had bowed and urgently marched to the door, so much so that she almost rattled the floorboards with her heavy footfalls. The sigh that the Hokage let off wasn't lost on her remaining company, who herself started to approach the desk with a somewhat hesitant expression.

"Tsunade-sama…" Ino slowly started, "Is…is what Naruto said…" Tsunade immediately knew where this was going and felt no need in giving the long explanation, ergo she followed Naruto's lead and went straight to the point.

"Is it true that Naruto and the Yondaime are related by blood?" Ino, still astounded by the news as well as the fact that the Hokage had her so easily pegged, simply nodded, making Tsunade smile.

"I'm surprised you didn't see it the second he stood in front of the picture." Tsunade pointed to the framed image of the late Hokage in case Ino had forgotten its existence, "Trust me, Naruto looks so much like his father that it's not even funny."

"But…why didn't he say something earlier? If we'd all known then maybe…maybe he could have been spared so much pain. People would have paid more attention to him. His life could have been so much better!" Ino's voice gained power as she felt an unknown source of determination drive her thoughts. Tsunade's eyes opened further at her second apprentice's unexpected outburst, but even so, the Hokage had an easy answer.

"Simple. Naruto never knew in the first place. In fact, he didn't find out until almost two years ago." Tsunade, in no real mood to elongate her answer, left it as it was; nor did she feel any real need to keep the line of discussion going. However, she had noticed on more than one occasion that Ino was seeing Naruto in a different light. Because of this, she waited patiently as she watched Ino's mind churn through her eyes, filing through the most appropriate things to say. Ino looked down to her hands, which were now being wrung between the fingers of the other as she racked her thoughts together. She looked up at the Hokage with an almost pleading face, nearly reluctant to part her lips when she was ready to speak.

"Tsunade-sama…can you help me with something?"

Tsunade raised an eyebrow with curiosity. She was expecting a question, yes; but she was most certainly expecting it to be about the third member of their blonde triplet. This was going to be interesting.

* * *

He knew she was there. He felt her chakra the second it had emerged from the Hokage's office and headed in his direction. The jinchuuriki kept walking at his brisk pace, telling himself not to mind if his teammate caught up with him. However, this whole situation was annoying him.

Why now, of all times, would she decide to start chasing after him and try to talk?

Sasuke was back, albeit chained to a wall in a dark cell, but wasn't that half the ending that Sakura had wanted? For Team 7 to be reunited once more? For Sasuke to be brought back to her…_for _her? Wasn't this the ending that Naruto had shed so much blood and so many tears for? Granted, that wasn't exactly the ending that had been achieved, but it was definitely near as damnit.

Naruto could always count on his only female teammate to voice her faith in bringing her precious _Sasuke-kun_ back to the village…with Naruto's help of course. That is…if by 'help', one meant 'blood, sweat, tears, and endless emotional stress'.

But now, Naruto no longer understood Sakura's thinking process. The girl he would once give the world for wanted nothing but to see the blonde walk away from her, for the countless ramen invitations to stop, and for the silly wooing attempts to cease. For almost two years, Naruto watched as Sakura pined for the other member of their team and punched the innocent one when her advances failed. All that time, she had cemented the fact that she wanted only one person; the one person who happened to be emotionally stone cold - bar anger and unbridled rage – and apparently completely uninterested in the opposite sex. She wanted _him_, plain and simple.

And since that day in the Land of Iron, Naruto couldn't see why the one he once loved was trying to throw so much of that fact in his face. As far as he saw it, Sakura's lie was nothing but a sick joke, he couldn't understand why she'd do such a thing. And according to other sources, she knew about his feelings; she _knew_ how he felt about her, and yet she felt it necessary to play him in order to, as he later found out, 'keep him safe'. That one thing struck Naruto as being quite off.

Since when did she see fit to try and subvert his own goals by playing on his feelings?

Part of the blonde teen wanted to let it go like he usually would, but only so much of Sakura's treatment could be taken before a certain part of him refused to let it slide, and this was the last straw. It was then that Naruto began to tell himself that Sakura had little to no respect for him. After all he had done to help her, support her and even save her, she still needed somebody to act as her kicking toy.

'_Not anymore, Sakura'_, was what he soon thought to himself.

And that was when he had confronted her face to face about it. The result: A slap in the face for the jinchuuriki, and a painful insight into the angry and emotional side of a boy that he kept to himself for Sakura. That, however, was what had brought Ino into his midst.

As far as he was aware, once Sasuke was back within the confines of his home village, Naruto wouldn't be seeing Sakura any time soon. Of course, she'd be too busy kissing the traitor's boots to care about anybody. Naruto's confidence in – and slight anger over - that single hypothetical scenario was the reason for why he decided to almost completely bury his feelings for his teammate. It was also the reason for why he just dumped Sasuke at her feet on the day of his reclamation and simply walked away. Sakura was surely bound to give him no time from then on, so why should she have the pleasure of his company anymore?

But if that was the case that Naruto had played out in his mind so many times, then why in the name of Kami herself had the pinkette not logged a single visit to the bastard's cell since the time of his incarceration?

It also raised the question he was currently asking himself: _'Why is she coming after _me_?'_

The problem was that Naruto had a small niggling idea right at the back of his head as to why. But his stubbornness refused to let it be anything more than a fleeting thought that would drift by every few weeks. He didn't have any proof to back up his hypothetical notion, but the thought was still there, and it was something he didn't like.

"Naruto!" He heard the source of his follower's urgently toned voice only a few metres behind him down the corridor, and yet despite the proximity, there was still a distinct echo. Preferring to avoid any large-scale confrontation, Naruto pulled the safe card and gradually slowed to a stop, already giving off a slight air of impatience. Judging from the sound as well as how he could feel the floorboards shake a small amount as she drew closer with every hard step, Naruto could tell that Sakura's pace was rushed, but not enough to break her out into a jog; it felt like she was trying to win a walking race.

Although the pressure of Sakura's boots lessened for every metre she gained on the now stationary Naruto, the rattling of the floorboards from the man's perspective always stayed the same. Naruto's hands fell motionless by his side, showing his willingness to stay; yet the fact his back was still turned said the complete opposite. Sakura noticed the multi-messaged posture, but said nothing as she came to a stop just two metres away from her target.

The silence, bar the birdsong outside a nearby window, felt deafening to the medic-nin. Naruto's frigid posture unsettled her all the more, and it suddenly made her hesitate even longer. As she locked her gaze onto a crack in the floor, she didn't catch her teammate's head turning to the left, exposing a small portion of his whiskered cheek through his bangs.

"Do you need something, Sakura?" The jinchuuriki's voice held neither malice nor cheer. It was flat, giving off no signal as to the speaker's inner thoughts. Sakura looked up, still seeing only orange, black and yellow as her eyes traversed from the bottom of his cloak and back up to his shining hair, which blocked his face.

Another five seconds of silence. Naruto still refused to move from his position while Sakura looked between the floor and the wall to her right in a desperate attempt to find something that would kick-start her into talking. She knew their friendship was already strained thanks to her past discretions, and she felt another worry that not speaking now would make her seem worth even less of his time.

"I, er…" Sakura hooked her left arm behind her back, and used her hand to grasp onto the elbow joint of her right, forming a popular 'nervous schoolgirl' posture.

'_**Say something before he wipes you off the slate for good! You can tell that he's getting impatient!' **_Inner Sakura screamed. The boost from her alter mentality suddenly made Sakura's head snap to attention. Finally, she had an idea as to her opener, and took a deep breath.

"Naruto…" As she looked back up, she could see his head turn a few more degrees in her direction, angling his ear towards her, but still keeping his features hidden behind his massive blonde curtain of hair. "I…I just wanted to say something. Something I know is long overdue, and…probably too late as well. But if I don't say it now then it'll be too late, and I don't know what'll become of us in the future otherwise." The reaction to Sakura's leading line didn't say anything about Naruto's concern. He simply tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling, almost as if he knew what was coming. Naruto knew it was going to be one of two things, but he'd just have to listen on in order to find out. Sakura's hands swiftly readjusted themselves to land in front of her stomach and grasp at each other before she looked up and spoke, putting her whole heart behind her words.

"I'm sorry."

Naruto's shoulder's visibly tensed. Yep, that was the first thing he was expecting to hear, the first thing he knew people would say to him after he let his heritage be known to them. Before he could respond in the way he had planned to, his teammate - whose voice started to crack from a sudden release of dammed emotion - started to speak once more.

"I…I've seen the person, the hero that you've finally become, the one you always wanted people to see you for, and for a while it's made me think back to...worse times." Both teenagers quickly thought of different dark moments in their history as a team. For Sakura, her first thoughts were of Sasuke's defection, and then moved on to Naruto's transformation at Tenchi Bridge; Naruto on the other hand, thought of only one thing:

_That_ confession…

"Almost every day I was…so cruel…to you, mostly; blinded by an obsession that slowly tore me away from my logical thinking. All that mattered was _him_." The way she hissed out the word wasn't lost on Naruto, whose curiosity of such was apparent in his eyes but could not be seen, and stood silent in waiting. "But I was so stupid to not see how much everything was hurting you; we were young and naïve, so how were we supposed to understand? And now every single time I think back, it hurts more and more to realise how badly I treated you, before _and_ after you left with Jiraiya-sama…" Sakura's cracked voice tailed off as she saw Naruto's hands clench at the mention of his master and godfather. Even now, it wasn't news to anybody that the old pervert was a sore subject for Naruto to handle.

Sakura felt it all knotting up in her throat: the guilt, the self-hate…and the desire to see that gleaming smile from her favourite blonde, the hope that her words would make him see a new Sakura. She knew now that she'd come too far to bail out and cut her speech short, and slightly raised her voice with a single tear trailing down her cheek.

"I know what you're thinking, Naruto. But I also know that you're wrong. I'm trying to mend a battered friendship and make it stronger than before. There's been something missing in my life for a long time now, and I realised months ago that it was you! I just want my teammate back; I want my _friend_ back!" Although Sakura couldn't see it, Naruto shut his eyes tightly; as much as he suddenly wanted to interrupt the monologue, his body remained frozen to the spot in defiance, as well an apparent eagerness to hear his teammate continue.

"I'm not the Sakura I was, Naruto! I've seen how much I've hurt you and hardly a day goes by that I wish I could change what happened, especially in Tetsu-" As soon as she had said started to utter the location, Naruto had forced his hand up.

"That's far enough, Sakura, please don't talk about that place again." Naruto's voice had fallen considerably; both at the mention of Iron and the fact his emotions were now hammering his mind. How should he feel? Compassionate? Angry? Sorrowful? He talked unexpectedly gently as he turned around and faced a teary-eyed Sakura, who found herself being lifted as she saw Naruto's amazingly bright sapphire eyes rest their gaze on her orbs of emerald.

"You know how I felt about what you said to me that day, and I'd rather not have a repeat of our…conversation." Sakura quickly looked down to the floor with a small nod of understanding, but looked back up as she heard Naruto's footfalls close in on her. He was now a metre away, just out of arm's reach.

"Sakura", the young man said inside a dejected sigh, "I don't know what to think around you anymore." Sakura's face fell at Naruto's words, and yet she could understand his reasoning.

"You say one thing and do another; you tell me you're sorry, but all I'm hearing right now is 'I'm sorry, Yondaime-sama'." Sakura's painful expression spread further across her face, and forced more tears over her eyelids as she viciously shook her head in denial.

"That's not true…" The pinkette whispered to her feet. Naruto did nothing as he watched his teammate slowly fall into another bout of self-induced upset. As per what Sakura was referring to earlier, she had a feeling that the man before her would believe her apology to be somewhat an ass-kissing manoeuvre. In actuality, she had been meaning to approach Naruto for this exact reason for a few weeks now. But there was only one problem, she couldn't find him, and any time she could he was happily talking with Ino.

That suddenly made her wonder, just when had those two had all that big of a connection? The question was put aside as Sakura heard Naruto's clothing rustle as he took a step back.

"I mean it, Naruto…I'm sorry…for everything, and I want to make amends. I want us to be like we were before…" Sakura shrugged her shoulders with a humourless chuckle, "…just without the unnecessary violence."

While Naruto was surprised by his teammate's words, he didn't let it show on his face…he couldn't afford to, otherwise he would be giving himself hope, and all he had ever done in the past was give himself the hope of a happy ending. Too often had he dreamed that retrieving Sasuke would make Sakura see the blonde in a much better light; but from all their time together, it was nothing but 'Sasuke this' and 'Sasuke-kun that'.

"Erm, well…can I start by taking you out for some ramen later? Consider it an early birthday present." As cliché as the notion was, Naruto could tell from Sakura's locked gaze and barely noticeable smile that she was nothing but serious. Her demeanour hadn't suddenly jumped as if the preceding three minutes had only been an act, and it confused him as to what the young woman across from him was thinking; and that, he felt, was the exact reason why he didn't want to accept.

"As much as I hate to say it, Sakura, and no matter how shocking it is to hear it from me of all people; a bowl of ramen doesn't solve everything." Sakura's eyes shot open.

'_**What? Did he **_**seriously**_** just turn down a bowl of ramen? Oh sweet Kami, the world really is coming to an end!'**_ Inner Sakura essentially fainted from the notion with arms flailing, but the Sakura on the outside just widened her eyes in shock and confusion, and she didn't lose the expression as Naruto stepped forward and returned to his previous position.

"Seriously, Sakura, I have no idea what goes on in your head anymore. I can't tell what you want until it's far too late, and either I'm getting stabbed in the back, or somebody's inevitably getting hurt. I've got a rough guess as to why you're suddenly being so chatty, even though you've seemingly denied it, but what I can't understand…" Naruto began to step closer, but the way his posture held himself above his teammate made the pinkette slowly step back. She noticed that he had suddenly adorned a small frown, indicative of his impatience.

"What I can't understand is why, after _six_ months, after bringing Sasuke back to you, _for_…you…" Naruto began talking through clenched teeth, emphasising the 'for' and 'you' in his sentence by lightly poking Sakura in the shoulder, "…You _still_ haven't visited him in his cell at I and T." Both teenagers seemed to have an ironic synchronicity in their movements as they both ceased their bipedal movement on exactly the same step, keeping the same amount of air between both of them as when they had moved. Naruto pushed his head forward a few extra inches until he could smell Sakura's fragrant shampoo.

"Why?" He demanded in a menacing tone.

Sakura suddenly felt pressed to answer. Unfortunately, it was a question that asked of an answer that would force out that _certain_ fact that Naruto had denied to himself. She didn't want to risk saying anything at the moment.

"I…because…" Even as she was trying to build up an excuse by stalling, Naruto had already become impatient and straightened up, swiftly turning on his heel and increasing the gap between them.

"It doesn't matter now. I gave up on that bastard the second I dropped him at your feet." Sakura was briefly reminded of the moment Naruto had let the Uchiha slip from his shoulder and fall with a crunch onto the gravel below. It was at the moment she knew that Team Seven was broken beyond repair.

"You say you're not the Sakura that you once were, well let me tell you this; I'm not the Naruto you once knew and punched, either. I've seen and felt so much that I finally realised I was just wasting my time on a dream." Naruto shook his head and raked the fingers of his right hand over his scalp before turning around. Sakura was surprised to see a look of sorrow and regret on his face, but respectfully remained silent nonetheless.

"While I may still feel something for you despite our history, and that's the honest truth; there's…somebody else who's starting to take your place. But for that, I'm not sorry, since you and I are just friends; and I _was_ an idiot for thinking we'd ever be anything more." Sakura felt a wave of numbness drench her insides, while her heart felt a definite pain, as if a miniscule senbon had punctured it. She could only watch as Naruto turned back with a farewell and began to walk away once again.

"I'll see you around, Sakura." Naruto murmured unenergetically. Suddenly, Naruto remembered something that could have let him avoid the entire conversation altogether.

'_Wait a second…I've got a Hiraishin kunai sitting in the apartment!' _With a tiny growl and a light smack to the face from his hand, he continued to walk around the curved corridor until he knew that nobody could see him, including Sakura, and vanished mid step, as if he had never been in the building.

* * *

**POV SWAP: First Person – Haruno Sakura**

That's the second time I've watched him turn his back to me and walk away. Even though it's already happened twice before now, it still hurts deep in my chest, having the one you've come to admire turn away from you. One person did that to me a long time ago (and knocked me out in the process), but _he_ doesn't exist anymore; no, he was dead to me the moment he tried to destroy my village. It's obvious that nobody can predict the future, but it's funny how things change against how you hope and yet you can still enjoy it happening…most of the time at least.

Naruto…

Such an idiot in the academy, and someone I felt had been given life for the sole purpose of making mine miserable. But that was when I didn't have a working brain so to speak; the boy I claimed to love was controlling it. Honestly, what would a twelve-year-old know about love? That blonde knucklehead was just so…so…

Either way, I didn't treat him like I should a teammate, but it's really painful to hear him reject my apologies like that. And I know what he's thinking: '_I'm oh so sorry Son of Yondaime-sama, please forgive me and let me have your babies!'_ Total nonsense, for a few months now I've been seeing him for his true self: a kind, cheerful, reliable, dedicated, sometimes funny, determined shinobi of a proper calibre. He's no Uchiha Sasuke, thank Kami, but that's…that's what I admire about him the most. He's Uzumaki Naruto, and that's why I…

But despite this, he's always been cold-shouldering me, subtly pushing me aside like we haven't known each other for almost ten years now. My only regret…is that I brought it upon myself. Obviously, he still hates talking about it, but what I said in Tetsu no Kuni…it was the only thing I could think of that might have worked. But because of it, I lost his trust…big time. And when we ended up screaming at each other's faces about it…I finally saw how badly it hurt him, realised how foolish and selfish I'd become. He'd always been looking for recognition, from me more than anybody according to Sai, and I only helped in making him feel worse. Some person that made me look like to him.

There's one question I've asked myself many, many times since that day, the day I thought that he'd given up on me: Was what I said a lie? I'm getting closer to a definite answer with every passing day as I see him walking through the village or sparring with his clones at the training grounds. I figured that apologising would be the best way to start rebuilding what we once had, but he _still_ thinks I'm the Sakura long-gone. That's not the case anymore, but it's as if he refuses to see it. I…I just want my Naruto back…

I'll never forget that day, the day they both appeared at the main gate; it was then that I knew that after all this time I was paying attention to the wrong teammate.

* * *

_Myself and Ino were already near the gate, tending to wounded civilians in the wake of Sasuke's beginning of an intended massacre. Even I could tell that he let the anger and desire for blood get to his head, did he seriously think he could destroy an _entire_ hidden village on his own? Knowing him, he'd probably trained non-stop with just that goal in mind. I never thought he'd actually go that far, though; at least 50 civilians and 13 shinobi were already dead, and I just…refused to believe it. But there comes a time in somebody's life where they have to let logic take over and ignore their heart, Sasuke made his own choice to come here and murder our people, and for that I'll never forgive him._

_Every wound I tended to, my mind made it look like it had happened to Naruto. Nobody had seen anything for three hours, and every distant demonic scream we could hear made my resilience to my emotions crumble. I was scared, scared for Naruto. I remember the last time he and Sasuke spoke, he said they'd end up killing each other, but I was hoping against all the odds that I'd see them both again. I no longer cared about whether _he_ was dead or alive, I just wanted to see that smile once more, that massive grin that never ceased to cheer me up on a bad day…not that I ever told him that._

_As I tended to a deep burn wound on a civilian sat next to their damaged house, I wasn't ignorant of a Jounin that ran behind me and came to a stop in front of an aimless Chuunin and spoke in a hurried manner._

"Send word to the Hokage, Uzumaki's approaching the main gate-"

_That was all I needed to hear. I was finishing up on my current patient and running to the gate before my mind could catch up with my body. Apparently, Ino heard it as well, since she was running right beside me. I couldn't understand it, why was she so adamant to get there as well, and why were there tears in the corners of her eyes? As far as I was concerned, she was still thinking about Sasuke; I could remember how she cried when they told us he'd been branded a criminal. The sight that greeted us when we finally arrived was what started to bring the tears for me._

_Both of 'my guys' were there, but only one was standing, slowly limping towards us. Even though he felt a mile away, I could still hear his heavy, laboured panting as he had the weight of his opponent slung over his shoulder. His jumpsuit was almost non-existent, his jacket and fishnet top were gone, giving me a front row view of his body, watching his chest rise and fall with every breath, and how his abdominal muscles slowly slipped against one another as his upper torso swayed. His pants were torn from the knees down, exposing his bleeding shins and blackened feet. It was a sight that brought both happiness and pain to my heart, to see someone you cared about in such a dire state, but alive nonetheless._

_I could see the reluctance in his face, the frown hanging above his eyes told me of some kind of pain outside what his body was feeling at that moment. I was soon to find that out…_

_Every step he took garnered a heavier pant, as he seemed to rebel against his body's wish to collapse and lose consciousness._

_It was unbelievable…he'd done it. He'd brought Sasuke back, both of my teammates were right there in front of me. A wish I'd had for years had finally come true. Even so…the man who had left wasn't the same anymore, I couldn't say he was the teammate I once had, not anymore. I couldn't help but smile at our long-awaited reunion, but Naruto's face told me he was thinking otherwise. He was so close, close enough that I could reach out and hug him, feel him against me; just to make sure it wasn't all a genjutsu._

_But it was the look in his eyes that could only make me imagine all that I wanted to do. He looked distant, reserved, and even angry. He just stood there and stared at me, looking over to Ino once or twice for clarity._

"Promise fulfilled."_ He said to me, as if the very life had been sapped out of him. Only then did I look to the body lying over his right shoulder._

_Dark and wild hair obscured Sasuke's face, but I could tell from the glossiness of some of its strands that he had a head injury of some kind. His limp arms were severely grazed and slightly blackened, indicating chakra and fire-induced burns. I didn't have time to concentrate as the body I was gazing at fell to the floor, landing against the gravel with an uncushioned cracking sound. I didn't even have to look at his body in order to tell that it was a wrist bending the wrong way. I guess I had Tsunade-sama to thank for all that training. As my eyes remained pasted on Sasuke's body, simply because I still couldn't believe he was finally back where he belonged, I could feel Naruto's eyes on me as he spoke again._

"I promised that I would bring him back…" _He said in a tone that would rival Neji's sincerity, _"…not that he'd be in good condition once I did." _He still looked so unhappy, even as I looked back up to him with my restrained tears finally carving wet valleys down my cheeks. This Naruto stood before me…I had no idea how to act with it, so I opted for silence once again._

"Now you can finally go back to way you were six years ago…both of you." _He looked over at Ino as he said this, but the accusation in his tone made me narrow my eyes and shiver in unease. Is that what he thought? That we'd instantly turn back into ignorant ewes that'd push him away again? I wanted so desperately to speak out at that moment, to prove him wrong, but once again he spoke before I could part my lips._

"I'm done with this. I'm done with him, and I'm done with the two of you as well." _That hurt. That sentence stung me right to the core. That's why he was suddenly so angst-ridden; he seriously thought we were the same mindless drones from the academy (then again, I can't speak for Ino…). It was only later that I took slight offence to that, but at the time, my chest felt constricted at his hidden rejection. Wait…did he say 'the two of you'? What did he mean by that?_

"Have fun chasing him like you always did. I don't care anymore. Just don't get too upset that he's only got one eye left." _That was last thing he said to me that day as he started to move again. I didn't give another second of attention to the – apparently one-eyed - body at my feet as Naruto limped on, alone, past Ino and me and in the direction of the tower. And then we saw it: three kunai _still_ lodged in his back, each one a source of a dark red vertical river of blood that disappeared down the waistline of his pants. I can't believe he…he walked all this way with such injuries, was he _trying_ to get himself killed?_

_The shock of the moment still forced me to freeze to the spot, with one teammate lying half-dead behind me, and the other turning his back to me like he hated me. Even as Tsunade-sama was jogging towards him, and he soon collapsed into her arms after finally succumbing to his tiredness, I couldn't move until my mentor rocked me out my stupor with her powerful voice. I was ordered to tend to Sasuke even though, inside, I wanted to leave him to his pain. Unfortunately, circumstances always went against me from there. By Tsunade-sama's orders, and against my fully voiced wishes, I was to tend to Sasuke until he was conscious and fit for a trial. Shishou herself stayed at Naruto's side for all three days he was out, and occasionally asked Ino to help with duties. I could see it all in my master's face and actions…she loved Naruto like he was a true member of her family, but not as mother and son, more like siblings; blood was the only thing denying their having a proper brother-sister relationship._

_Even though Tsunade-sama hadn't known Naruto for as long as myself, I saw how he had that important impact on people's lives; and as I saw how he made other people feel, it made me realise just how much he had actually done for me. Once Sasuke had been transferred to ANBU I & T, I didn't want to see him again, and I knew that his place in my heart had been taken by someone much more special to me…_

* * *

And yet, just like on that day, he's walked away from me…away from what we had as a partnership. I miss seeing that smile, but I want to make it shine out once again, just like it used to whenever he looked at me.

Tomorrow, Naruto-kun…you'll see just how much I've changed.

* * *

**I said in my profile I'd release this on New Year's Eve, but my impatience got the better of me and the special something is taking quite a while to write. Instead, I've decided to release what's already been done. That way you'll be understanding of the setting. Don't worry about the Sakura-centric chapter, it folds out with some substantial Naruto and Ino interaction time.**

**Don't take this fic too seriously, it was something I felt like writing, but the fact I take my released work seriously has made this fic more serious than I intended. Never mind, I hope you enjoy it either way! Reviews welcome etc etc**

**P.S. If you're hoping for Naruto to fully blow Sakura off next chapter...you're going to be disappointed.**


	2. October 10th

**Disclaimer: I still don't own any aspects or materials of the Naruto universe...*commits suicide*...**

**N.B.: This is my first proper 'In-Fic' reviewer response.  
To the member 'Tristan Ludlum': I'm very grateful for the thorough review. It was detailed and I appreciated the feedback greatly. However, I must quote your line, _"I hope that you don't cave in and make every-thing all right between the two with another apology and OMG I forgive you every-thing's O.K now lets get into bed and have wild monkey sex." _**

**...**

**Yeah, you might want to just give up reading this fic right now, take it from me XD**

**Okay, I'll admit that it's not as simple as, 'OMG I'm sorry' and 'OMG you're forgiven'; there's a bit of development in it but the way I've written it still makes it seem highly implausible. What can I say?**

**Anyway, on with the fic...**

* * *

Just Reward

A Naruto Three-Shot

Chapter 2: 'October 10th'

**POV SWAP: First Person – Yamanaka Ino**

After I spoke with Tsunade-sama about…certain matters regarding a…certain person…yesterday afternoon, I came straight home from having finished my duties. It was funny to think that Naruto's sudden appearance in the office had meant an early end to my work, but it made me all the more cheerful for what I had planned for today.

I'm suddenly very eager to probe that blonde idiot for some big news, news such as, oh, I don't know, the fact he's _the Fourth Hokage's son_ amongst other things. 'Other things' being, 'how in the world did he just teleport into a room without a sound?' Why the hell didn't he mention any of this earlier? If he'd told us when he knew, then he wouldn't be spending his birthdays in isolation, away from some of these stupid villagers who still see him as the kunai and not the proverbial scroll it's sealed in. Gah, that just annoys me beyond anything else! He needs to open his mouth more! He can trust us…he can trust me.

If I were to go back in time to my academy days and tell my twelve-year-old self that I'd end up getting so close to my fellow blonde, I'd be laughed at and called the biggest liar in the world. But…I'm glad it's turned out this way.

It was such a weird experience. Sakura had come round to my house one night, soaked to the bone in the rain, but I could still tell she was crying. Everything she told me about what she had said to Naruto made me understand her predicament and take her side right away. I guess I wasn't too savvy to how Naruto must have felt about everything; because boy did he let it go when I got up in his face about it a few days later. I couldn't believe he would just push my best friend to tears in the way he did, and that anger was what controlled my actions as I tried to force him into a guilt trip. Unfortunately, I didn't seem to get the memo that said that Naruto had turned into somebody who wasn't taking any more crap from those who thought it was cool to just pit the blame on him all the time. Because of that, I got my licks just as much as he did.

That guy is such a mystery; he can be a blithering idiot one moment and a damn philosopher the next. He seemed to read me so well as I tried to literally knock some sense into him, both in my moves and the sorts of things that went on in my head. But eventually I found out about the Naruto he rarely let us see…the one that was affected emotionally by everything that happened to him. It was kind of heartbreaking to see his face twisted in such emotional pain, even as he landed a fist in my gut for my trouble…

So much has happened to him over his life, stuff that the pain of which I can't even begin to imagine. Raised without a family, hated by his home, beaten by his peers – which is something I now hate being reminded about – and sought out by an organisation eager on killing him. It was so shocking just to see such a fragile guy, somebody who only wanted recognition for his actions, but could never be seen past his massive burden. In return, though, he saw the Ino that I don't like exposing: the insecure girl who relied on her competitive streak and looks to make her seem like somebody important. An eye for an eye I guess.

On top of that, we both knew the pain of losing somebody close to us. Asuma-sensei…he was such an amazing man, he was something like an older brother to me, much like Shikamaru is now; I felt my heart tear apart as I watched him fall into the darkness, but I…I still tried to heal him, even as the medic in me knew he wouldn't make it. I just didn't want to let him go, but I can smile knowing that a part of him lives on in his adorable son. Kurenai-sensei is a lucky woman; there are few men like Asuma-sensei about…

Naruto is much the same. As much as he bragged on about Jiraiya-sama being such a pervert, I could see how badly his death had been taken. I'd never be so heartless as to say I wasn't sorry, I knew that feeling after all, and I knew that I'd be there to support him as his friend. So at least when our brawl finished, we had a common ground to lay as the foundation for a renewed friendship that's built up to this day.

The funny thing is…I'd soon started to see him in more of a light than just a friendly peer. I wouldn't say I was confused, no way; it's just that…the only other guy I'd _liked_ in such a way was that asshole, the one who tried to raze the village to the ground. I don't know what Sakura thinks about him anymore, and I don't really care, she can have him as far as I'm concerned.

But that bastard's not the subject right now; it's the bastard's teammate I'm talking about here. After our first little…'chat', I caught him having his 'usual' at that Ichiraku place a few days later, so I just thought I'd join him and talk some more…as a friend of course. There's a funny thing about Naruto, if you say and ask the right things he'll respond in a much more intelligent way; he won't just grin and shout about training and the Hokageship…no, he'll give you his opinions, thoughts and a lot more. At first I was kind of scared to say it but…hanging out with him was fun. There I said it: I have fun when I hang out with Uzumaki Naruto. Jeez, the twelve-year-old me would be stabbing herself right about now if she were to listen to me drone on like this.

Another weird thing is that my ideas about liking that knucklehead beyond friendship aren't that misplaced. He's funny, especially when I have to knock him into line, loyal, gentle when you catch him at the right moment, intelligent when ramen's not the topic and, dare I say it, a looker. And yes, I said that as well: Naruto is an attractive guy. As a matter of fact, I'm not denying that I may have had some nosebleed-causing thoughts as he walked towards Sakura and I with that Uchiha slung over his…muscular…shoulder. Erm, anyway, moving on!

As the days went by after Naruto recovered, I don't think the idea of him as a…special somebody isn't that ridiculous anymore. Mostly because he seems to return some of my silly remarks and gestures, things like playfully pushing each other as we walk through the village, sitting just that little bit closer to each other on a public bench etc.

And that's suddenly reminded me of the rose…

* * *

_I was stood tending the shop on my birthday just under half-a-month ago, waiting for my shift to end so I could get ready for my party, and none other than my favourite blonde (my parents and myself aside) walks in. We had a cheerful greeting and a quick chat before he started to look around. At the time I didn't know whether it was for somebody, something or if he even had any idea what he wanted in the first place, which was a typical male shopping method: impulse and blind assumption. At that moment I laughed at the thought of giving him a lesson in understanding how a girl thought when it came to shopping; but I quickly threw it away, since he'd probably fall asleep the second I started._

_Anyway, a part of me thought, reluctantly, that he was looking for something for my old friend Billboard-chan. We all knew how he felt about her…but since that incident all those years before, I wasn't sure whether he was going to finally bury the hatchet. I just watched him as he knelt down at one of the buckets containing some single pruned roses, a darker shade of red than blood. He walked back towards the desk holding this one little flower in between his thumb and forefinger, avoiding its tiny thorns._

"So, who's the lucky girl?"_ I asked him with obvious sarcasm and a smirk. He looked at me with those bright blue eyes, just one of the things that never ceased to send a shiver down my spine when they focussed on me…the good kind of shiver, of course. He just laughed with a small smile of his own as he pulled out his wallet. Honestly, what was so special about that thing? And who calls their own portable bank 'Gama-chan'? Well, Naruto apparently, and even though I may complain about it, it does look like a cute little accessory._

"I'm not saying anything, Ino-chan…" _I felt kind of disappointed at that, didn't he trust me enough or something? Oh, wait…I suppose I am the gossip queen of Konoha, though. Maybe he was just being secure for privy's sake, _"…but I can say that you'd like her. She's great to hang out with, kind of bossy, like you, and has a hidden gentle streak." _It was around then that I started to feel a small pang of jealousy. I tried my best to keep my face cheerful as I took the ryou from his hand and placed it in the cash machine. Sadly, he gave me the exact amount, so I couldn't prolong his stay by stalling the handover of his change._

"Are you coming to the party later? Not that I wouldn't mind being the only blonde in the building, but…"_ I cut my sentence short as Naruto lightly chuckled at my quip, at least I could feel happy knowing that I could bring a smile to his face._

"You know I wouldn't miss it for the world." _He said to me as he headed for the door. Being mesmerised by his smile was the reason for why I almost didn't notice that the rose was still lying on the desk in front of me._

"Hey, Naruto!"_ He turned to look at me for the last time with his eyes wide open in confusion. _"You forgot your flower." _I held the rose up in plain sight, but was surprised to see Naruto smile again and slowly shake his head._

"No, I didn't. Happy birthday, Ino-chan." _Without another word, he was out the store and halfway down the street. I just stood there, completely stunned and with my arm still held out and holding the rose. I slowly brought it back towards my face to examine it. It was such a clichéd flower, and it was such a simple thing for a gift…but I loved it. Presents for a girl don't have to be so luxurious and expensive, sometimes it really is just the thought that counts (contrary to what some guys say). In fact, that little gesture touched me beyond anything else, and that was when I knew my feelings were in the right place._

_After Naruto defeated that Pain guy years ago, I said something that even I considered a little bit of a joke. I said, _"I could almost fall for him."_ But now…there is no 'could almost', I just know that I had from that moment on._

* * *

And that was where I was now, stood in the shop once more until my mother came to relieve me of my duties. A lot of customers, both browsers and buyers, have been banging on about the Kyuubi festival. I would go, but there's somebody I'd much rather spend my time with tonight. Now don't get any big ideas, I just want to take some ingredients with me and have a go at making him a nice meal; it was the easiest thing on the list that Tsunade-sama had regaled to me yesterday after Naruto and Sakura had left the office. I'm not just a femme fatale, you know, I do cook at home sometimes as well, so he won't need to fear for his digestive system's safety. Then again…seeing the look on his face would be a treat.

Even though I've gone over my feelings so many times since my birthday to make sure I'm not just turning into another fangirl, and since confirmed it to myself, I don't know when the right time to say it would be. Even if tonight turns out to just be a progressive stage, I'll be happy.

I hope you're ready, Naruto-kun…tonight we'll see just how our bond develops.

* * *

**19:06hrs**

**POV SWAP: Third Person **

"Go and have fun guys, there's no point wasting you're whole evening on me, just enjoy the festival." Naruto was leant against his open door as he tried to gently coax his current guests into leaving after a two-hour stay in his apartment. Stood in front of him were two members of another squad who had become an item only a few months before.

Hyuuga Hinata had a long-standing crush on Naruto for the best part of four years, but after Naruto's fight with Pain – during which Hinata confessed her love for him - he soon decided to settle the issue. At the time, he still felt some high emotions for Sakura, and on top of that he had never properly had time to understand the clan heiress. If they had spent more time around each other earlier, he told her, they could have been something more. Although this upset Hinata, Naruto quickly jumped back in by informing her of somebody who had been watching her with a keen eye. That somebody was Inuzuka Kiba. Details aside, the two took it slow in order to search their own feelings, and they finally started dating after Sasuke's return.

"But Naruto-kun, we don't want you to be alone all night." Hinata spoke with care and without a stutter. It seemed that being friends with Kiba for so long finally did something good for her confidence. Naruto felt a warmth creep through his chest that his friends had prioritised him over the festival, it was one of the few things that truly made them his precious people. On the other hand, he didn't want to be the centre of attention for too long.

"Don't worry about me", Naruto urged with a wave of his hand, "I'll be fine, I'm just happy that you both decided to come over." Hinata smiled meagrely with a small nod, which was outshone by the large nod Kiba extended in Naruto's direction.

"I guess we'll be off then. See you soon, Naruto, and happy birthday." Kiba bid farewell as he wrapped his left arm around Hinata's waist, an action that made Naruto smile. At least _they_ were both happy…not that Naruto wasn't happy himself, of course. At different times during the day, a multitude of the surviving (and non-incarcerated) Konoha 11 had paid Naruto a visit. Tenten and Lee had visited earlier in the afternoon, but it was saddening to not see Neji with them…he was but one of the few people close to Naruto who was lost in the war, along with Chouji. Regrettably, Kakashi had lost a leg from the knee down when a stray exploding kunai landed behind him, and Shikaku, Shikamaru's father, was left blinded in a botched attempt to dodge a raiton jutsu from a Zetsu clone. In comparison to some of the other hidden villages, Konohagakure had it easy in terms of their losses.

Naruto quickly shook the saddening thoughts away. Even though he had been given life eighteen years ago to the day, another two lives close to him were lost at the same time.

"Tou-chan, Kaa-chan…" Naruto briefly looked up at the cloudless sky, bedazzled by the beautiful flickering of the stars. One shone out especially bright, and the blonde couldn't help but smile, wondering if it was his parents intermingled into that one entity, looking upon him from on high. He put the thought aside and walked back inside his apartment, wondering if Ino would make herself known. He had always wondered if his little display at the flower shop was a step too far, but seeing his fellow blonde wearing the present in her hair the day before was an uplifting sight.

With the thought of the purple-loving kunoichi swimming in his skull, he decided to return to his bedroom and lie down so that he could spend the rest of the night in peace, if he wasn't going to get any more visitors, that is.

* * *

Ino was making her way into the lower quarter of the village with a barely noticeable skip in her stride. In her arms was a thirty-centimetre square box wrapped in a simple cloth and knotted at the top. She had already made her way through the busiest area of the village, game stalls and puppet shows amongst many others peppered the sides of the streets. Ino herself wasn't bothered that the villagers were all having a pleasant time in their unity, but she felt a greater concern for Naruto, who hadn't been seen all day, and she found herself feeling worried at the thought that he may be all alone.

Soon enough, she was entering a lesser-lit area holding a large portion of the village's accommodation buildings. She had already been to Naruto's apartment numerous times since the war ended, and didn't have to worry as she let her feet zigzag her through numerous side alleys and walkways. Eventually, she was exiting a staircase at the second floor of a newly renovated building; turning left to look out onto the outdoor deck, she saw a figure leaning over the open-air railings, looking out over what could be seen of the village from their position. Naruto's apartment was in that direction, but she wasn't too sure about the shaded person stood right in her path. Sucking up her concern, she continued on.

As she got closer, more and more of the ambient light illuminated the figure. It was a man dressed in a long sleeved blue muscle shirt, which was tucked into a pair of baggy black combat slacks. The dress sense wasn't what made her relax, though; it was the wild and unrestrained blonde hair. Only one person she knew had hair as crazy yet stunning as that. The figure looked over with a snap, demonstrating an apparent alertness. Ino saw the on edge movement and tilted her head to the side in confusion.

"What's wrong with you, then?" She asked with a sceptical laugh. The man quickly relaxed as they finally took in the purple top and skirt as well as the fishnet covering her elbows and knees. Naruto quickly scoffed before pushing himself off the railing and standing straight.

"Just being cautious, Ino-chan. He was wondering if you were going to turn up." 'He'? What did Naruto mean by that? Ino raised an eyebrow in curiosity, a gesture not lost on the man in front of her.

"Boss just put me out here to turn away any…undesirables." Ino had it pegged the second he said 'Boss'. She was interacting with a Kage Bunshin. The platinum blonde nodded in acceptance, and decided to have a quick word play.

"So…am I an undesirable, then?" Ino lifted her right hand up and, a little too innocently, placed the tip of her index finger at the side of her lips, bringing them forward into a small pout that brought out the shine in her small application of lip gloss. The clone stood back with a hitched breath before bringing his left hand up to rub the back of his head and flashing that silly, overly-toothy grin.

"Far from it, Ino-chan. Just knock and he'll open up." The clone stood to the side and motioned Ino through, catching an almost-hidden glance at her smooth fabric-covered ass as she walked past. Ino didn't just notice the look she was awarded with, but she could almost _feel_ the clone's stare burning into her lower cheeks. She was happy to please, because even though it wasn't technically Naruto looking at her, it was Naruto who'd be getting the images when the clone dispelled.

It took only ten paces for the platinum blonde to end up standing in front of the correct door, and she wasted no time in bringing a lightly balled fist up to rap against the smooth varnished wood. Ten seconds passed with no answer, and so Ino repeated her motion. Twenty seconds of waiting received no response, either, and Ino was starting to get impatient. In a final bid to get the inhabitant's attention she returned to the method of her young days and smashed her hand against the door like it was a young Naruto's head. The rattling echoed across a significant distance, and was sure to wake up anybody who had planned on sleeping. This time, to make sure she was going to be heard, the purple lover wasn't going to stop until the door finally opened. After ten seconds of her hammering, she couldn't hear the loud and significantly pissed off voice from the other side of the door.

"I swear to Kami herself that if you're here to stir shit up…" Finally, the door was forced inwards, bringing a heavy creaking from the hinges due to the force of the movement, and Ino was met with…a definitely scary sight.

Naruto was stood before her, his body ablaze with blinding chakra flames of bright orange. His teeth were bared and his eyes held an anger that froze the girl to the spot. Only after taking in his presence did she notice that he had a fully charged and bright blue Rasengan swirling and swelling above his palm, surrounded in a cocoon of opaque orange. Ino was truly mesmerised by the sight of her friend, staring in awe as she watched his hair sway like it was caught in water, and how his canines had lengthened and given him a primal and animalistic appearance. She sought out his eyes again, and found them to hold a much more gentle air as the jinchuuriki looked appraisingly at his company.

"Ino-chan…" Naruto said before hanging his head with a loud sigh and allowing the Rasengan to dissipate into the air. He quickly dropped the chakra cloak and ushered Ino inside without a greeting. Ino, still shocked silent from Naruto's display of ferocity, remained standing in the hallway as Naruto closed the door behind her.

"What…what was that about?" Ino tried to say with a confident tone, but it came out more like an impersonation of a young Hinata. Naruto walked straight past her and motioned for her to follow him out of the hallway and to the first open area on the right, leading into the kitchen. Naruto always kept his property tidy, on the contrary of what many people had thought. He didn't bother living with too much luxury, and had all the simple amenities such as a fridge and freezer, kettle, toaster and microwave. A simple wooden table with metal legs stood at around mid-thigh height in the dead centre of the room. Two small scrolls sat on top of the table, Ino could tell one was still unopened due to the unbroken seal at the lip. She quickly remembered the two scrolls that the Hokage had thrown at him the day before, meaning that he still hadn't opened the second one since he got home.

"Sorry about that. But people who knock on my door like that usually don't come for birthday celebrations, you know?" Naruto shrugged his shoulders with a nervous and half-fake smile. Ino knew what her fellow blonde was talking about, but she was still surprised as to why he would react in such a way. The look on her face must have given her away, because Naruto was quickly grabbing the only open scroll on the table and holding it up for his guest to see.

"I told those moronic council elders that I refused to put up with these annual attacks anymore. So I said I'd defend myself by whatever means I could, even if it was against civilians." Ino was both shocked and surprised at this, surely Naruto wouldn't be so stupid as to willingly attack _civilians_, even if it was in self-defence. Naruto held the scroll out, encouraging Ino to take it. She slowly laid the box of ingredients in her arms down on the table, taking Naruto's curious gaze with it, and slowly unrolled the scroll and mouthed the contents to herself.

"_Konohagakure no Sato Council Decree #32216_

_Adjudicators:_

_Senju Tsunade – Godaime Hokage_

_Utatane Koharu – Elder of the Konohagakure Council_

_Mitokado Homura - Elder of the Konohagakure Council_

_Effective as of October 10__th__ on the year of his eighteenth birthday, and the window between the 9__th__ and 11__th__ of every October henceforth, Jounin shinobi Uzumaki Naruto is hereby permitted to use __less-than-lethal force in self-defence only__ against any attackers, of both shinobi and civilian status, who may see fit to jeopardise the well-being and security of property of the aforementioned shinobi._

_Those found to have performed actions that unequivocally mandate the execution of this decree are to be sentenced in accordance with Konohagakure laws pertaining to assault, vandalism, and any other charges deemed necessary and relative to the actions of the accused._"

Ino looked up from the scroll and saw a pensive look on the man across from her; he appeared to be waiting on her reaction before saying anything. Ino quietly rolled the scroll up and placed it back down on the table before lightly coughing.

"I suppose that's fair", she said without emotion, "It's about time you got your own back on some of those idiots out there." As she folded her arms underneath her chest, she watched Naruto's shoulders fall as his pent up tension left him. He was worried about how Ino would react, but didn't want to keep the information a secret from her either, otherwise it would just seek to mess up a level of trust they'd carefully spent time building together.

"I just did that…" Naruto pointed back in the rough direction of the front door, "…as a scaremonger so I wouldn't have to hurt anybody. It just deters people from trying anything, and it's worked quite well so far. One group tried it about three hours ago…it was funny seeing their faces once I opened the door." Naruto smiled at his remark, but was all the more surprised to hear a small chuckle coming from Ino. It was then that Naruto felt that his interpretation of Ino was wrong; he could see that deep down she really did care about what he had to say…he just wished Sakura had been the same earlier. Ino saw Naruto's face muscles relax as he looked back to her, and walked back over to the table and her as-of-yet unopened box.

"Anyway, I thought you might be feeling a little lonely tonight, so I thought I'd whip up a nice birthday dinner." Ino started to untie the knot hovering above the box, but quickly noted how Naruto kept a reserved look and maintained a good metres distance away from the table. "Don't be scared, you wimp. I've cooked at home before, so I doubt it'll kill you. In fact, I think you might enjoy it." Ino quickly abandoned the box and walked over to Naruto, circling behind him and gently placing her hands on his shoulders. She caught a lavender-like smell coming from his muscle shirt, attributing it to either his clothing detergent or a deodorant; either way, she stole another quick smell before pushing Naruto in the direction of the hallway, and beyond it the living room.

"Now just go and relax, I'll call you when it's ready." She felt a sudden resistance to her pushing and saw Naruto turning his head around to address her.

"But I've done nothing today _but_ relax, Ino-chan. Can't I help out in some way? Cut some vegetables, lay the table, anything?" Naruto's answer was a harsh shove across the hall and straight into the living room. He quickly turned to walk back out but an incredibly hard look from Ino promised him nothing but pain if he took another step.

"No!" She exclaimed as she pointed a finger right at the point between Naruto's eyes. "You will stay here and relax!" Ino caught the look of a pout hidden in Naruto's eyes, and a sneaky idea came to her. She walked forward with a little more hip sway than was required, which definitely caught Naruto's keen eye, and brought her face within inches of his own. He could feel her breath touching his lips, and he was hoping with all his heart that she would just move a little closer…

"If you're a good little boy…" she whispered with a not-so-subtle seductive tone, "…I might consider giving you a nice reward for your trouble." Naruto simply froze to the spot at the implication of Ino's phrase when coupled with her body language.

'_Is she going to…?'_ Naruto didn't finish the internal question as he watched Ino walk away with an evil smile and that sway in her hips still remaining. He didn't dare follow her out of curiosity for his 'nice reward', although his mind was pleading, begging to find out right away.

* * *

**One Hour Later**

It hadn't taken long for Ino to prepare a dish she had heard of and tried out from the western lands: cold chicken (which she had graciously stolen from the family fridge) with gravy along with numerous vegetables. At first Naruto was reluctant to try anything green or not soaked in broth, but the words that he had said to his mother on the day he gained the Kyuubi's chakra always made him think twice. The two sat next to each other and conversed over Naruto's day as they ate, where the male of the blonde duo explained how most of it had been filled with his friends coming over with gifts or just to keep him company for a while; either that or how he was scaring off groups of Kyuubi haters that knocked on his door with his enhanced chakra form.

There was one thing that Ino had always been curious about since Naruto brought Sasuke back. It was about how he was so cold on the day as he was stood in front of Sakura and her. Naruto said his emotions had got caught up in the moment, and he was angry at his assumed certainty of Sakura and Ino becoming immediately ignorant of him once Sasuke had recovered from his injuries. While Ino couldn't speak on Sakura's behalf, she assured him that she no longer felt anything for the locked up avenger.

Naruto had offered to clean up once they had finished eating, as just sitting around while someone else worked went against his ethic, and Ino had only accepted once she had joined in. With the majority of the remaining utensils lying on the draining board, Ino found Naruto stood staring at the surface in front of him as if he were in a trance. She quickly walked over to him as she picked up a fork and started to dry it off with a cloth.

"Hey", she said gently, gaining his attention by nudging his body with a bump of her hip. The birthday boy slowly looked across at her and gave an almost lazy smile. "You okay?" Ino asked as she placed the fork down on the counter and turned to face her host. Naruto shrugged his shoulders and quickly twitched his head to the side as if something was bothering him.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just thinking about things." Naruto reached across Ino, who was stood on his left side, and grabbed a knife that lay drying on the metal board by the sink. Ino felt her spine tingle as Naruto's bare arm barely grazed her top just under her bust, and his face came, once again, within inches of her own. The move made Ino freeze for but a fraction of a second, and a small blush crept across her cheeks. She looked back across to Naruto, and could make out his own reddened cheeks under his whiskers. The image itself was quite cute in Ino's eyes, but at the same time, coupled with Naruto's muscular build as it sat right next to her and her arms begged to reach out and touch it, she thought it to be one of the most irresistible things she could have laid her eyes upon. Seeing him stood there as everything he was, she wanted to be sure of something before making the move she had hoped to earlier in the day.

"Naruto", Ino looked at the counter much like the man beside her had done earlier, and didn't look up as she felt his gaze on her face. She didn't hear him say anything, and as such she took it as a sign to continue.

"What do you think…about Sakura?" She didn't need to say much, but Naruto's entire range of movement had been reduced to zero as she said the name. She knew it was evil to ask such a thing of the man she had come to adore, but she wanted confirmation of her own suspicions before letting anything happen. "I know how you felt about her before the war started. So what I really want to ask is…do you still feel something for her?"

Naruto let out a heavy breath, as if the air itself was a weight on his shoulders. He remembered everything he had said to his teammate the day before by the Hokage's office, and even when stood next to Ino, he knew his thoughts and attitudes still stood. He continued to rub the cloth in his hand over the knife that had already dried two minutes before, trying to focus on something else as he tried to lay his answer out as gently as possible. Naruto had long since given up on trying to lie to himself about his feelings for Ino. The two had shared the same pain as well as realise each other's true selves. He and Sakura had never properly done that, and he wanted to keep that feeling of proper proximity alive in his relationship with Ino. Naruto narrowed his eyes in thought as he answered.

"Sakura's been my teammate for a long time. We've had our good and bad times, as well as shared a lot of experiences together, but I haven't forgotten a lot of the pain she's caused me, both through pining for a traitor and lying straight to my face. I'm not going to lie to you, Ino-chan…" Naruto said as he looked across and saw Ino's undivided attention facing him and him alone, he looked away once more before speaking, "…Even though it's less than before, Sakura still has a place in my heart." Ino felt her own heart clench at hearing that, and looked away with a hurt expression. So, Naruto still felt something for the pink-headed medic…of course, love can be a very powerful thing.

"But…" Naruto's quick vocal burst made her look straight back over with her eyebrows crooked from her previous moment of hurt, "…over the past few months, my eyes have been following someone else." He finished by turning his head and meeting Ino's eyes again. Ino didn't have to bother processing the look on his face in order to understand just what message he was putting across. Did he…did he really begin to think of her that way? Ino tried swallowing, but the lump in the back of her throat had seemingly become a part of her oral tract. She saw the look of want in his eyes, but it had the extra gentleness of somebody who looked at one they cared about. Ino felt that what Naruto had said had been enough, but she didn't know if she'd made herself clear enough, even with her flirty show before dinner.

"You know…on that day you defeated that Akatsuki guy, Pain." Naruto slowly nodded, and neither blonde failed to notice the fact that their bodies had automatically begun to close in, chest-to-chest, face-to-face. Ino's throat started to dry up, but it didn't stop her speaking with a cracked voice. "I was joking…when I said that I could fall for you."

"Yeah?" Naruto whispered as their faces broke the ten-centimetre proximity barrier. Naruto actually had no knowledge of Ino saying such a thing up until now, but he was too caught up in the girl stood before him, eyes half lidded and lips minutely parted and slightly pursed. For the second time that night, both teenagers could feel one another's breath on their lips. Without being asked, Naruto brought his left arm up and slowly, with a feather-light touch, stroked his hand up against Ino's right arm, from the forearm up to halfway between her elbow and shoulder. Ino slowly released a held breath from the soft feeling coming from Naruto's hands, hands that had been calloused from palm heel to fingertip from training and combat.

"But I…I'm…not kidding myself anymore…" That was all Naruto needed to hear. He pushed his head through the last two inches of air obstructing him, and brought his lips onto those of the blonde stood almost flush against him. Ino let out a small squeak as she felt Naruto's hard, muscular chest crush against hers, and his ironically smooth lips take her own. Ino's hands shot up around and behind Naruto's back to lie flat against his shoulder blades, pushing more of him towards her, more of the body of which she suddenly wanted to caress every inch. Naruto's hands quickly fell to the small of Ino's back and crept slowly south to cup her taut buttocks, eliciting another miniature moan from the platinum blonde as they both tried to attack each other's mouths from an angle that would bring a better sensation. Ino became the first to succumb, and she let her slick tongue creep out and brush against Naruto's lip. After the first contact got no response, she started to slowly and repeatedly prod Naruto's mouth with her muscle again, desperately seeking an entrance.

Naruto's brain was whitewashed once he felt Ino's lips, all despite being the one who closed the gap. He was too lost in savouring her texture, her taste, to notice something lapping against the inside if his lower lip. He let his curiosity lead him by parting his lips further, and felt something akin to some wet and slippery bug slide past his gums and caress the roof of his mouth. He let his eyes briefly flash open to see Ino's eyelids shut tight as she fell into the bliss of their labial union. Feeling left out, Naruto slowly pushed out his own tongue to battle with that of the girl invading him. Sakura be damned, Ino thought, Naruto was now on the short path to becoming her man. The pinkette had had too many chances to make things right and accept Naruto's feelings. But no, her way of just making things worse with every decision she made had sent a fine piece of human real estate her way, and for that she was actually grateful of her friend. Ino let out a whimper as Naruto realised, like any human, that he needed to breathe at some point within the next five minutes. His hands hadn't moved from her soft rump, and Ino wanted to feel more of the body she had just laid claim to. Her hands slowly took in every bump and valley in Naruto's muscle structure as they came back to the front, under his armpits and rested on his pectorals. Ino couldn't help but steal a quick squeeze, feeling how his flesh moulded with minor resistance to her exploring fingers; the response to which was for both of Naruto's hands to take a hard squeeze of both of her lower cheeks, making Ino tilt her head back and breath in sharply. Naruto saw the open window and dove back in, aiming his lips at the exposed flesh of her neck. It had only taken a quick round of kissing and a few playful squeezes, but Ino could easily feel how uncomfortable her panties were becoming as they slowly absorbed the run-off emanating from her rapidly dampening lower region. Never did she believe that Naruto would have such an effect on her just from the start.

"Naruto…" Ino breathlessly moaned as she let her left hand fall to Naruto's hip, while she raised her right to mould her fingers to the side of his face. Naruto slowly pulled away from her neck, leaving a tiny trail of saliva across her skin in his wake, but still kept his face close enough that their noses were practically touching.

"Ino-chan…I…" Naruto tried to start, equally flabbergasted, but Ino beat him to the punch.

"I want you…_now_…don't make me wait…" The jinchuuriki needed no further encouragement as he brought his head and hands down together to both lock lips with and lift Ino into the air at the same time. Ino was happy for Naruto's intuition; she knew she would probably lose patience if she had to walk to his room. As soon as her feet had cleared the floor, the platinum blonde was wrapping her legs around Naruto's waist as tight as she felt was necessary; she also encircled Naruto's neck with her arms so she could maintain their facial contact. She knew Naruto wouldn't mind if her clamping legs were too tight, she was just making sure that he was attached to her for as long as possible. Naruto walked down the length of the hall, handling Ino's bulk with no trouble as he moved like he would on any normal day…when a beautiful kunoichi _wasn't_ latched onto his upper torso.

Thankfully, the door was already open a crack, and so it only took a small toe punt from the lip-locked Naruto to force it open and bang against the wall. Ino was far too wound up in Naruto's hands, lips and body to bother noticing when she had gone from a vertical to a horizontal orientation as Naruto laid her down gently on the bed to the left of the door. Naruto had always been curious about one thing, and he was surprised to think back and realise he'd never seen it before. As he pulled back and hovered above the tantalising kunoichi below him, feeling completely overwhelmed by the beauty she exhibited in her current position, he moved his right hand from her waist and let it glide up her body, accurately following the contours of her stomach. He brought his left hand out to support his weight as his right hand continued upward; he cheekily brushed the pad of his thumb along the outside of her covered left breast before curling his fingers behind her neck and finding his target. Slowly but surely, Naruto retracted his arm, taking the simple elasticised band that held up Ino's hair with it. She couldn't help but smile as Naruto's face blanked at the image he witnessed unfold. Never in their time as acquaintances or friends had Naruto seen Ino with her hair freely down and flowing, it was something that had slowly grasped his curiosity. What he was looking upon not only met but also further soared above his expectations. Ino looked like a proper goddess as her bright strands fanned outward and meandered like waves down her back. To Naruto, she looked greater than beautiful, but he couldn't help but say the word anyway.

"You look beautiful, Ino-chan." Ino's smile grew with an accompanying blush as Naruto's words only sought to make her feel even more special. Naruto moved back in to reunite their lips and finally started the ball rolling as his right hand was brought back up to Ino's chest. In a passing move, Naruto contracted his fingers and gently squeezed Ino's left breast from over her top, eliciting a louder moan from the kunoichi's throat. The fondling hand continued inward and upward, moving from her sternum up to her clavicle, where Ino felt the first button of her top being undone. She was happy that Naruto had decided to make the first move on the clothing front, mostly because she was unsure about pushing Naruto straight from clothed to bare-topped with one swipe of her arms. As Naruto's fingers slowly coaxed the third button into giving, exposing more of her body to the rapidly warming air, Ino's confidence grew, and she found both her hands travelling down to the hem of Naruto's muscle shirt. However, she didn't stop there. Her fingers managed to brush the bare skin of Naruto's lower stomach before finding the outer fabric of the waistband of his pants, making Naruto lightly groan in approval. Taking it as a good sign, her hands moved closer to their target further south. Naruto knew that at her current speed – which was far too slow in his opinion - she'd hit his erected tool in about three seconds. Ino's body was such a sight to behold that the jinchuuriki couldn't control his male functions, and was almost ready to start breaking through the elastic in his boxers due to how painful his hard on was swelling inside its fabric prison. But he would wait…he would let Ino explore it for herself once she reached it in one more sec-

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Ino's hands quickly shot back up Naruto's body and rested in the same place before, on his chest. Naruto couldn't believe it, his erection was right at its peak and bursting for action, and just at the moment of truth, some moron goes and slams their fist on the door. Naruto let his pain and frustration be known as he clenched his eyelids as tight as possible. He was almost certain that whatever asshole waiting outside just knew what was going on, and felt like breaking up the party for kicks. Naruto looked back down to Ino, whose face-enveloping blush had returned, and met both her teal eyes. She smiled nervously but quickly held off Naruto's worries by placing her hand against his cheek. He let his eyes drift closed as he savoured the feeling of her velvet-like touch.

"I…think it's for you." Ino said gently. Naruto opened his eyes again, but he could tell from Ino's posture that she had no intention of leaving. For that, he gave her a small smile of gratitude. The three slams against the door repeated themselves, demanding the attention of the apartment owner. With a growl of extreme disapproval, Naruto pried himself off his blonde and purple lover before walking out the door, making sure to close it behind him for the sake of her privacy, and marched with lead feet for the door.

One thing had suddenly crossed Naruto's mind. If the person violently smashing their hand against his door was there for the sake of hurting him, the clone he left outside should have dispelled, either because it had been hit or it needed to warn its creator. Since he had not been given a new feed of memories from outside, it could only mean one thing. It was somebody he knew. He was surprised he hadn't realised that when Ino had arrived, otherwise he would have spared her the trouble of the scary greeting.

With that in mind, Naruto didn't bother creating his chakra cloak, and instead opted to just twist the handle and pull the door towards him. What he saw…both surprised and amazed him more than anything.

Stood in a beautiful silk kimono with white cherry blossom petals embroidered into the pink fabric, along with a light red obi, stood Naruto's teammate Haruno Sakura. Her hitai-ate was absent, letting her smooth, straightened hair fall beside her tinted cheeks like a pink waterfall. Her blazing emerald irises shone out, even past the dark night sky, and froze Naruto where he stood. The obi around her waist was tightly wrapped so that it clearly outlined her hourglass figure, showing off her hips and how they gradually curved into the tops of her thighs. As a simple finisher to the outfit, Sakura had her uncovered feet inside a pair of pink, open-toed sandals that matched the hue of her kimono. Sakura flashed a bright smile as Naruto looked upon her like she was a princess; recently she had come to miss the way he looked at her. Despite the confident smile, Sakura felt the heat of her blood flooding under her cheeks, forming a bright blush that she felt could almost make her shine in the dark like a lightbulb.

"Hello, Naruto." Sakura chimed with apparent innocence, although a somewhat hidden low tone made it seem partially seductive as well. Not seeing any kind of reaction coming from the man she had come to realise her feelings for, she held her hands low and out to her side in order to frame her body and outfit as if she were modelling it, "Happy birthday."

The only reason Naruto had frozen was because his teammate of six years was stood right in front of him, and her best friend was down the corridor…lying on his bed…in the process of being stripped. Now he wasn't sure whether Sakura had tried any sort of temper control over their time apart, but he sure as hell didn't want the pinkette finding out anyway and risk her punching him into the next village.

"Er…Sakura", was as a good a start to a greeting that Naruto could think of as his mind was conjuring up all kinds of escape plans and excuses.

The two stood silent for a good twenty seconds. Sakura was quietly waiting on Naruto to say something other than her name, while Naruto was failing to come up with an idea that didn't involve him forcing Sakura to leave. Realising he would need to receive and give pain in order to keep the secret safe for the meanwhile, Naruto put on a tiny frown that quickly made Sakura's face fall.

"What…what are you doing here?" Naruto asked as he looked out onto the deck and saw the clone shrugging its shoulders at him. Sakura was taken back with the way Naruto forced his question, but she wanted nothing but to make him happy, and she felt the quickest way to do that would be by answering his questions.

"Well, I've been your teammate for a long time now, Naruto. I wouldn't be so stupid as to forget your birthday." Sakura tried to ease Naruto's (fake) sceptic look with a small teasing chuckle whilst pivoting her body to the left and right to further show off her attire.

'_I'm sorry, Sakura.'_ Naruto thought, as he knew what had to be said. _'But you can't be here right now.'_

"If you're looking to make an impression, Sakura", Naruto started by nodding at his guest's kimono, "Sasuke's still at I & T. I'm sure he'll be over the moon to see you." Naruto's deadpan tone certainly didn't lay off the sarcasm, but the way Sakura's face twisted from his words told him he'd _definitely_ said the wrong thing. Her hands fell limp by her sides, much like the day before, and she looked at him like he'd just slapped her in the face.

"I mean, why waste your time here with a useless idiot like me when the guy you've been chasing for so long is sitting on his lonesome in a cold cell? Isn't that how you'd rather spend your festival night?" Naruto hated himself for having to say such horrible things, but a part of him was saying it as if it believed that Sakura still had feelings for Sasuke. He just watched as Sakura let her face turn to the ground, allowing her hair to mask her eyes. Naruto could feel the pain in his heart as well, but he was holding onto the thought that Ino would be able to show him true happiness.

"Why…" Sakura whimpered, forcing Naruto to look back at her. He could make out the small, clear orbs on her chin refracting the moonlight back towards him. "Why are you…_still_…ignoring me? Why…can't you just…let me talk to you again?" Sakura could hardly get a coherent sentence out between her choking sobs and gasps for air, but Naruto knew exactly what she was saying.

"Because…" Naruto felt his own emotional resistance crack. He hated seeing his teammate in such distress, but he didn't want that hope to come back. He couldn't afford to let himself fall prey to that trap of being pulled in because of his feelings, no matter how tempting it seemed.

"Because I know I'm not the one you wa-" Naruto never saw the charge coming. Before he could react, Sakura had lunged forward, grabbing him by the front of his muscle shirt and swinging him into the wall on the left.

"You are such a brainless IDIOT! How can you be so moronically dense?" The force of Sakura's broken voice alone was pinning Naruto to the wall, much less her rock-cracking grip, and he was genuinely shocked to see his teammate with tears pouring down her face as she started to scream just inches away from his face.

"You're letting our past blind you so much that you won't accept what's right in front of your face, Naruto! I just want you to see that I've changed just like everybody else has!" Sakura punctuated many of the syllables in her sentences by pushing Naruto back into the wall behind him with a sharp extension of her arms. Naruto hadn't seen this form of Sakura in a long time, and it only made him feel more useless as he watched it happen with greater force than before.

"And don't you _dare_ say it's because of Sasuke and me!" Sakura quickly had her index finger pointing at Naruto's face in warning, "I haven't gone to see him since you brought him back because…because…" Naruto feared the next words from her mouth. He was hoping she was just going to give a small excuse, but by sod's law, it was not to be so.

"Because I fell in love with you, Naruto! Did you get that? I love you! And I'm not lying to myself this time! I…love…YOU! " Sakura ended her rage by maintaining a short eye lock with the frozen shinobi before burying her face into his chest and crying away the rest of her anger. And that was it; the original suspicion that Naruto refused to believe had just been confirmed. After all this time, he'd told himself that Sasuke was all that mattered, and it turned out that he was no longer the one that Sakura had opted to follow. Before he could think further, he felt the frequency of convulsions coming from the body in front of him shorten, and tried to let himself move forward, but Sakura had other ideas.

Even though she was still annoyed that Naruto had tried to blow her off as the Sasuke-stalker once again, she was beyond ecstatic that she had finally told him of the feelings she'd been bottling up the past few months. She had come with the intention of making his night…_very special_, and she was hoping he'd accept her because of what he had said about still having feelings for her. She didn't care who this other person was, but she was determined to come out of the situation with the prize of Naruto.

"Naruto-kun? Is something wro-" Naruto's eyes shot open in horror. He looked back down the hall and saw Ino stood at his bedroom door, still wearing her half-unbuttoned top and twirling some of her freed locks between the fingers of her right hand, fingers that soon froze solid as she looked upon the new guest.

'_Oh, please no…'_ Naruto begged to the Gods. But it was too late, he felt Sakura slowly move her head to face the third party in the apartment. The two young women stood there gawking at each other; Ino because of Sakura's state of dress, and Sakura because of Ino's state of _un_dress.

"Ino?" Sakura asked in a high pitch as her emotions piled up again. There was just no way. Her best friend of all people was stood by Naruto's bedroom, about a third of the way to having her top removed. All of a sudden, she had never felt so betrayed. Sakura had, around two months before, let Ino know about how her feelings for Naruto had moved into the romantic zone, and trusted Ino to keep it a secret so that she could eventually surprise the blonde Jounin. And now she finds said blonde on the way to doing some unimaginable things with the only one who knew her proper feelings.

"Sakura…" Ino let out with a breath. She knew the game was up, but she in no way was feeling the urge to step down. If anything, she felt she was more entitled to Naruto, since the pinkette had spent most of her time putting the guy down and insulting him almost every time they met for a mission. Naruto so desperately wanted to say something, but kept quiet for the sake of his own safety; he wouldn't want both girls to suddenly erupt on him and beat seven shades of purple out of him. As a replacement he opted to wet his pants in his mindscape at his impending pain. Instead of pain, he felt the body stuck to his chest violently detach itself and take a step back. He saw the renewed pain on Sakura's face and started to put a hand up to explain.

"How long has _this_ been going on?" Out of the two blondes stood in front of her, Sakura sent the question more in Naruto's direction as she pointed at Ino.

"Sakura, let me explain." Naruto desperately wanted Sakura to understand the simple fact that nothing had happened until that night, but he could tell from Sakura's edgy movements that she was ready to kick up a storm.

"You and that pig have been getting all kissy with each other while you've been pushing me away haven't you? It's all just a big sick joke to you isn't it?" Sakura shot a lethal glare at Naruto, the tears falling for the second time that night; it wasn't hard to tell that the thought of him blowing her off while trading saliva with her best friend was sure to make her angry beyond anything else.

"No it's not!" Ino quickly interceded as she put her hands up and started to walk forward with cautious steps. "Naruto and I were-"

"Just about to get down and dirty in his bed by the looks of things!" Sakura cut in with a venomous hiss. She could see Naruto's regretful look, but was surprised to see anger on the face of her best friend.

"How about you let me finish, forehead?" Ino screeched as she came within at least two metres of the other two apartment inhabitants. So surprised was Sakura by the outburst that she decided to give Ino a small chance to explain herself. She took a deep breath in through her nose, all without breaking eye contact with the distraught pinkette, before elaborating.

"I wasn't a hundred percent sure this was going to happen in the first place! I only came by about an hour ago to make Naruto a meal; things just…went from there." Sakura's face told them both that she obviously didn't believe a word that had just been said. The tear-ridden medic looked back at Naruto, who only affirmed Ino's statement with a nod due to his concern of possibly receiving physical pain if he so much as coughed.

"So…Ino's the one you said was 'taking my place', huh?" The pinkette's voice was nowhere near confident, as every syllable was entrenched inside a mild sob. Naruto didn't like the way Sakura had said it, even though those were almost the exact same words he had used the day before. "Since when did you two ever get so close? If I recall, _Pig_, you disliked Naruto as much as I did in the academy!" Ino took one last step forward until all three shinobi were stood in a triangle, almost perfectly equidistant from one another.

"Don't remind me about those days, Sakura; I've put them behind me, just as Naruto has. And just so you know, I'm pretty sure I understand him better than you ever have!" Sakura's face scrunched in disbelief at the statement. She had been right with her own accusation as to Ino's past attitude towards the other blonde in her presence, but the pinkette herself had been Naruto's teammate for six years; how could she _not_ understand him?

"What are you talking about? I've been his teammate for years, there's hardly anything I don't understand!" Inside, Naruto didn't like Sakura believing she knew everything about him. He wanted to cut in at that point and add his own piece of mind, but Ino had closed the gap between the two kunoichi even further until the triangle shape between them had become a thin isosceles.

"Sakura, you were always too focussed on Sasuke to bother asking Naruto anything. Things like his likes and dislikes, his opinions, his _actual_ feelings. I've been close to him long enough to know just how much he _truly_ cared about you. When he first told me, I was jealous of you, did you know that? I was so envious because you had somebody who was willing to follow you to the ends of the Earth and _die_ for you. And you? You continued to use him as a doormat." Sakura could make sense of where Ino was coming from, and hearing her describe Naruto's past feelings with such passion made her see just how stupid she had been to have ignored them for so long. The only problem now was that she might be too late in reciprocating those feelings. Naruto stood as wide-eyed just like Sakura, all while Ino let out her own feelings; but being referred to in the third person whilst he was stood in the hallway made him feel a little uncomfortable.

"Er…I'm right here, you kno-" Naruto started to hold his hand back up, but it was soon shooting back down to his side as a wall of noise hit him dead on.

"Be quiet!" Both girls snapped their heads to look at Naruto's blue eyes, their snarling faces were indeed promising a swift beating if the only male of the trio didn't keep it zipped. Naruto tried to shuffle further backwards as if he tried to become part of the wall he was currently propped against.

"I can't believe you." Sakura said in a breathy whisper, "You knew how I felt about him, Ino…I…I thought I could trust you." Ino sighed at Sakura's upset words, but all she heard was the loophole and felt it necessary to act on it, despite how it may hurt her. Naruto was what mattered to her at that very moment.

"You never said nobody else was allowed to fall in love with him, Sakura. And…that's exactly what's happened to me in recent weeks." Ino spoke gently before looking back to Naruto, whose eyes betrayed his conflicting emotions. The girl he had once loved with the entirety of his heart, and soon lost a lot of that love, had just confessed to him; and now the girl for whom his feelings had started to grow exponentially was making an admission, too.

"I…I love you, Naruto." Ino held a small smile as she repeated her earlier, interrupted sentence with better meaning and clarity. Naruto had the good grace to smile with the confession, but inside his mind was tearing itself apart. Sakura saw the reaction that Ino's confession had received from her teammate, and she felt her heart split in half and then half again. She knew it right there, she was too late. Sakura tried to hide her heartbreak inside a cough, which got both blondes to look at her with different emotions written in their expressions.

"Well," Sakura coughed again as she shut her eyes and began to walk backwards towards the door, which had remained open throughout the argument, "I…hope you enjoy your time together…" Her voice broke at the thought of her two blonde friends embracing in more than a friendly manner. Feeling more tears well up in her eyes from the thought, the pinkette turned to bolt and soon heard two voices shout out behind her.

"Sakura!"

"Sakura-chan, wait!"

The medic-nin froze mid-step. The second voice, without a doubt, came from Naruto; she'd never forget how he used to say her name, and she involuntarily let an intricate warmth flow up her body from hearing it after such a long absence. Slowly and delicately she turned back around, halfway between inside and outside the apartment, and saw Naruto facing her with his arm partially outstretched in her direction. At that moment, Naruto's eyes had instantly changed. All she could see from his brilliant sapphires was a look of love and regret, a look she had wished to see directed at her more.

"You…you haven't called me that in over a year." Sakura allowed herself a small smile as she tried to hold back her tears with a sniff. Naruto took a strong step forward, but kept his body at such an angle that he'd be able to look back at Ino without hassle. The platinum blonde had respectively silenced herself, although Naruto's sudden actions made her suspicious as to what he was planning.

"That's because I thought you were after the teme. I thought he was the one you wanted, so I figured pushing you away would get you closer to him once he was back in the village." Naruto closed the gap between them as he explained himself. Yes, the confession two years before had been a factor, but he also wanted to make sure that Sakura got the man she wanted. And he figured by being less reliable to Sakura, it would assist in reaching that goal.

"I wanted you to be happy, Sakura-chan, so I tried to take myself out of the equation." Realising half of the root of their long misunderstanding, Sakura's face lit up with relief and pure happiness. Seeing Naruto look at and speak to her like she was one of his treasured people was one of the few things she had been dreaming of witnessing once again. With a tear-choked laugh, Sakura faced her teammate fully and walked toward him, slowly pushing her left hand out to grasp him. Naruto was half expecting a slap, but was mildly surprised to feel Sakura's slender fingers cupping his face. Through as yet unshed tears he could see Sakura's joy bringing a long-lost light to her beautiful face.

"You big baka", Sakura whispered, "You've always been my supporter, my admirer and my saviour. Why should you be the unhappy one any longer? I looked inside myself months ago, and I knew my heart was following the wrong person. I…I was a complete idiot myself to not see everything you had to offer: security, loyalty…love." Sakura was lost in the feeling of Naruto's skin against her fingers, and remembered the feeling of embracing his body from a few minutes earlier, and sought that feeling once again. The force with which she magnetically glomped him pushed him back and drew a small laugh from the young man, who responded by lightly encircling his arms around her back. Although it was an intervention of her own personal objectives, Ino smiled at the cuddly reunion. Inside, however, she was worried as to what choices Naruto would make within the next few minutes.

"Sakura-chan", Sakura pulled her head back with a milder expression of happiness as Naruto spoke in a serious tone, "I meant what I said yesterday. A part of me loves you still, and I'm not over what happened in Tetsu no Kuni…" As happy as the admission made her feel, Sakura knew there was an ulterior stanza approaching, "But I can't deny the way I feel about Ino-chan, either." Naruto knew fully well that there was a third person still in the apartment, and he turned his head to look at the wide-eyed blonde next to him. The conversation had suddenly turned into a game of emotional ping-pong; a compliment to one girl was a shot in the heart to the other.

"And I can't possibly make a choice, because I can't bear the thought of hurting either of you. I live to see my precious people happy, but I don't want to give that happiness to one person at the cost of another losing it." Naruto's predicament was easy to see. The girls beside him, though, weren't happy that Naruto's chivalry had surfaced and had begun to insinuate that nothing was likely to happen if somebody else was to be hurt; despite that, both of them were touched by Naruto's thoughtfulness. Ino had already come so close to having the man for herself, but Sakura's confession this time round had freed the part of Naruto that he had sealed away, the part that hoped for a relationship with the pink haired medic.

'_This isn't fair'_, Ino thought to herself, _'Doesn't Naruto respect us enough to let us make our own…decisions…?'_ Ino's face instantly lit up with a brainwave. She wasn't sure about the potential consequences, but she figured it would at least be worth having a go. Ino slowly walked next to Naruto and let her right hand glide across his shoulder, much like she had done to push him out of the kitchen earlier.

"Naruto", the man in question looked over to the young woman not currently in his arms. She could tell from his eyes that he was wordlessly apologising underneath an apparent desire for her to not leave. Naruto himself was splitting his mind apart over what he should do or how he should proceed, but the small smile that Ino was giving him made him think she was opting to leave. He didn't want to say anything that would disturb the pinkette burying her face into his chest, so he opted to try and let her know that he in no way wished for her to go.

"Would you mind going to the bedroom? There's something I want to…_discuss_…with Sakura." Sakura looked up and across at the mention of her name; usually, a 'discussion' with Ino consisted with either an isolated argument, or the sharing of a devilishly mischievous plan. She could immediately recognise the half-smirk on Ino's face as she waited for any kind of reason as to the blonde's wish. Naruto was more concerned about an impending violent rut that would soon break out in his hallway, the small smirk he saw only made him believe his own notion even further. Ino only looked back at Naruto with a much more urgent expression and twitched her head in the direction of the bedroom back down the hall. Despite Naruto's reluctance, he remembered that acting defiant in front of either of the two young women in his presence would result in an unavoidable gain of some painful injuries. Slowly relinquishing Sakura from his grasp and giving Ino a look that promised trouble if they caused a ruckus, Naruto edged himself further down the hall in a much brisker pace than Ino would have liked. Every time the man looked back over his shoulder, he was met with Ino's impatient frown, which was backed up by said kunoichi waving her arm as an indication to keep moving.

As soon as Sakura heard the click of Naruto's bedroom door reattaching the latch, she felt her whole body get flung like a weighted ragdoll as Ino dragged her into the living room by her wrist. Sakura started to worry that the 'who's better for him argument', like the many that had been before regarding Sasuke, would repeat all over again. Ino came to a halt in the dead centre of the room, but used Sakura's inertia to pull her past her and spin her around so they ended up face to face. As far as the pinkette could tell, Ino had no look of malice upon her features, nor was she exhibiting any traits that previously hinted at a Yamanaka rant.

"What are you thinking, Ino?" Sakura nervously fumbled with one of the kimono lapels by her collarbone and pulled it closer across her body, shielding herself. Ino's eyes shot a quick glance at Sakura's chest, now covered by the kimono fabric, but thought nothing of what the superior medic was doing.

"I'm only going to ask you this one question, Sakura. If I like your answer, then I'll tell you exactly what I'm thinking." Sakura mentally braced herself for whatever question was coming her way. Because of Ino's unmoving frown and dead-on stare, the pinkette had no idea as to what was coming. Ino had her question set up before she'd even started the conversation.

The night had indeed taken an interesting turn; one moment she was lying on Naruto's bed on the road to having a passion-filled night, and she suddenly walks out of his room to find her best friend pinning the guy to a wall. While Sakura and Naruto had been resolving their misunderstandings, Ino's curiosity was being directed at Naruto's soundproofing. The door was open a substantial distance when Sakura had – a little too eagerly – knocked on the door; but since Naruto closed it after he had exited the room, she didn't hear anything, not a sound until she had walked out and found the two teammates at the front door. Ino breathed deeply through her nose while still staring at the young woman across from her and opened her mouth to speak.

"Do you love him? Do you truly love Naruto?" Sakura was amazed that Ino had in fact significantly lowered her volume as she asked the question. Her voice was soft and caring, completely opposite of the Ino that Sakura found herself talking to and arguing with all the time; the pinkette figured that her friend was saying this for Naruto's sake, and as a way of showing how she seemingly cared for him, too. Sakura was answering within two seconds, she had never felt more sure of anything in her life.

"I do. I won't say that what I once felt for Sasuke wasn't real, but with Naruto…it's so much greater, so much more powerful. I feel like I can't be myself unless he's around." Ino saw nothing but pure honesty in her friend's eyes and lightly nodded.

"Good answer", the blonde replied in a low and breathy tone, while Sakura mentally flinched at the new smirk that had suddenly spread across her face.

* * *

Ten minutes had passed without a single hint of a noise inside the apartment. Sat on his bed inside his room with his head resting in his palms, Naruto was trying his best to mentally prepare himself for whatever was coming his way, be it pain, happiness…pleasure, anything. It was disconcerting enough knowing that the two kunoichi supposedly _'discussing'_ outside were the most famous amongst others for their tempers and competitive attitudes, and yet they were being as silent as a sleeping mouse. The blonde quickly found himself in a catch 22 position: if he went outside to investigate all the silence and still found the girls talking, they'd surely beat him into the floorboards; but if he stayed where he was and let the girls seemingly talk it out, he was scared over the possibility that they'd both storm into the room and beat him into the floorboards anyway. But that was when he started to use his brain again. He figured that he was more than likely the topic of…whatever was going on outside, so why would the two participants suddenly attack him out of the blue? With that in mind, the jinchuuriki let out a breath laced with relief and hidden hope.

At that moment, he heard the familiar tiny squeak of the door handle being turned. He lifted his head and looked on curiously as the door edged inwards, noting the slender, manicured hand attached to it. Before Naruto could begin to anticipate the coming sight, the hand attached to the door stopped moving forward, leaving only the hand up to the wrist in view. The blonde narrowed his eyes in disappointment, but quickly widened them again as he heard Ino's voice from next to the doorframe.

"Naruto-kun?" The girl sang slow and tunelessly, "Are you still alive in there?" Naruto remained silent as he tried to decipher the potential meaning behind Ino's tone, but a small growl from the hallway kicked him into responding.

"Er…yeah. I'm good." Naruto subconsciously shifted on the bed, placing his feet apart in such a way that he'd be able to launch himself onto them in case of a less-than-desirable sight.

"Good…" Ino lengthened the word considerably in an uncharacteristically cheerful demeanour. "Now, Naruto-kun, close your eyes", she said in the same tone. As reluctant as Naruto was to comply, he didn't want to risk Ino nor Sakura seeing his defiance and, once again, smacking him into the floorboards. The blonde let his eyelids droop down, all the while keeping his dwindling sight focussed towards the hand at the door, which still hadn't budged.

"Are they closed?" Naruto only heard his fellow blonde talk as he looked at the infinite blackness that lined the inside of his eyelids. Naruto took a deep breath in both preparation and slight worry before he called out in the affirmative.

"Yeah". After a short and quiet shuffling noise, which he assumed to be somebody looking through the gap to make sure he was telling the obvious truth, Naruto felt a small waft of air glide over his nose from the speed at which the door had been opened. Naruto's sense of hearing was soon put to good use as he heard not one, but two pairs of feet make soft patting noises against the floor with every step. Naruto knew no escape was possible once he heard the door latch engage against the frame once more. There was the distinct sound of one person whispering a 'shush' to the other before all the sounds of movement died right in front of Naruto. The jinchuuriki turned his head down towards the floor in wait, but only needed to do so for three seconds before he heard Sakura's voice instead.

"Eyes open, Naruto-kun." Because of the simple act of Sakura adding the suffix in such a deep and incredibly sexy tone, Naruto did away with opening his eyes as slowly as he'd closed them. No, he forced his eyelids apart and looked at the two kunoichi stood in front of him before immediately having a mental whiteout.

His manhood stood no chance in staying down.

His two guests were stood but a metre away from the birthday boy, their arms evocatively wrapped around one another's waists as they faced each other to a three-quarter angle…wearing nought but their underwear. Ino's, as expected, was a dark shade of purple that perfectly contrasted her light cream skin and platinum blonde locks. Her garments consisted of a solidly fabricated, non-padded underwire bra that clung to the shape and roundness of her 36C chest. The less than pleasurable temperature in the apartment had allowed her pert nipples to stretch some of the fabric out with them…not that Ino minded. It circled under the blonde medic's arms to the latch in the centre of her back, but there were no shoulder straps that Naruto could see. Her panties were of a normal, daily-wear design that covered enough of both the back and the front of her lower region to make her decent.

Sakura's outfit, however, was meant for situations like this. She was wearing a jet-black two-piece with a woven floral design over the half solid, half lace cups of her 34B bra that had the gall to expose a fraction of her areolae, a pattern that the equally revealing panties had mimicked by flashing barely a few strands of the tuft of pink hair that lay above her maidenhood.

So shocked was Naruto by the sight that he thought that he had actually been beaten to death, and his mind was showing him a pleasant image of the two girls that instigated it. The only thing that identified the image as reality to the overwhelmed jinchuuriki, was that he could _feel_ the tenting in his pants as his manhood was flooded with blood quicker than a bucket sat underneath a researching Jiraiya.

The seductive duo looked like they were only gaining confidence from Naruto's blank, open-mouthed stare as they smiled with a bright glint in their eyes.

"Happy birthday, Naruto-kun", both girls chimed in perfect sync, making Naruto furiously move his head in an apparent attempt to look at both girls at the same time. The overload of seeing bare skin, persuasive lingerie and these two things attached to the two girls he was having conflicting emotions over, made all the blood quickly fall with gravity, away from Naruto's brain and towards either his nose or groin. Within half-a-second, the out-of-his-depth Jounin was flat on his back in an undeniably dizzy state.

"Oh dear…" Ino innocently, and rather sarcastically whispered, "…I think we need to wake him up. Don't you?" Ino parted her smiling teeth and let her tongue peek out and run along her top lip as she glanced over to Sakura, who kept a reserved smile and nervously laughed. She couldn't believe she had agreed to Ino's proposition, but she knew it was for Naruto, and that was her main reason for accepting.

Naruto was brought out of his ten-second blackout by the noise of rustling coming from around his legs, which soon became the feeling of hands roaming along the insides of his thighs, awfully close to his…tool. With a groggy groan, he lifted his body up and propped himself on his elbows before looking down to the area of activity. It was a truly unbelievable sight.

Because Naruto had spread his legs earlier in his precautionary state, he had left a perfectly shaped window for both girls to kneel down next to each other and begin their activities.

"You know, Naruto-kun", Sakura began as she threw all caution to the wind and let the palm of her right hand lie right on top of his trapped erection, earning a sound that mixed a moan and a whimper, "The great thing about being in a situation like this with two medics…" Sakura pushed her palm further up Naruto's manhood, getting a tiny moan as well as a successful hold on his zipper, and slowly coaxed the metal downwards. Ino simply knelt beside Sakura and watched with a half-lidded stare of lust, her excitement over the coming release of Naruto's erection growing further than it had when she and her fellow blonde were alone.

"…Is that we know _all_ sorts of places and methods that we can use to instigate pleasure." Sakura had timed it perfectly. The second she had stopped talking, the zipper had been pulled down as far as it could. Ino decided to begin with her participation and started by sliding her right hand up past Sakura's – catching a quick feel of the fabric of Naruto's boxers, as well as the pulsing organ hidden beneath it, on the way – and deftly undid the button above the zipper with a twist of her fingers. The waistband of Naruto's combat slacks loosened considerably, allowing Ino's hand to continue upward and roam underneath his muscle shirt and along the chiselled plane of his abdomen. The motion caused her to lean forward slightly, and only did a better job of putting Naruto's penile area closer to her face; an image that brightened Ino's small blush and increased the heat and liquid output of her already moistening vagina.

Naruto couldn't believe it was all happening. His mouth had become dry from the excitement knotting in his lower stomach, and his eyes were closed from the silky smooth feeling of his teammate's hand moving at a snail's pace along the underside of his near-exposed penis. Although the blonde female anticipated the coming sight, she had become slightly more interested in seeing the body her hand was presently sampling. She quickly stood up and leaned forward so that she could reach all the way to Naruto's shoulders.

"We got most of our clothes off, Naruto-kun", Ino said as she yanked Naruto's body vertical, allowing him to look into her eyes, "I think it's time you started to join us." Naruto's own sapphires, however, had been diverted to the beautiful scene being displayed by her barely-bound cleavage, which hung down and just begged to be given attention. Ino saw the optical movement, but neither did nor said anything to insinuate anger. Instead, Ino, like Naruto earlier in the evening, pushed her head forward and engulfed Naruto's lips again. While Naruto's body still mutinied from the barrage of erotic senses, he couldn't control his mouth from pushing back and engaging in another tongue battle with Ino, who was already hitching his shirt up and past his chest. Once Ino had pulled away, yanked Naruto's shirt over his head and chucked it into the opposite corner of the room, she was bringing her lips down onto Naruto's left nipple, coaxing it into protruding further with her dexterous oral muscle.

Seeing all this unfold with a small jealous pout, what with having not felt Naruto's lips upon hers in her life to that present moment, Sakura took the initiative and, without any regrets, looped her fingers around the waistband of Naruto's boxers and pulled them all the way down to his knees – pants included - with a sharp tug. The small gasp that followed caught Ino's attention as the blonde had been exploring the deep gaps between Naruto's abdominal muscles with her tongue.

Both medics stared at Naruto's erection – which needed no support as it pointed straight towards the ceiling – with equal lust and gratitude. The seven-and-a-half inch rod that Sakura had unleashed, with veins making tiny pulses that collectively made it twitch with each heartbeat, only complemented the jinchuuriki's muscular and toned body.

"My, my…" Ino breathed out deeply as she slowly brought herself back down to her knees next to Sakura, who was deeply swallowing at the prospect of what she could do with such a handsome looking piece of flesh. Naruto had managed to keep himself propped upright in the position that Ino had pulled him to, and was gobsmacked - not to mention nervous beyond all cognition - that he was totally bare and naked in front of two of the most beautiful kunoichi in the village.

"Girls…" Naruto strained out as he saw and felt Sakura's left hand crawl up his thigh and slowly tease the base of his swollen penis with her fingertips. Sakura looked up with a half-lidded stare while Ino merely shot him a cheeky smile.

"…Why are you…ah…doing this?" The man spoke with an unintentional moan as Sakura's hand moved closer, allowing her fingers to encircle more of his hardened tissue around the base. Ino's smile became softer as she lowered her head and placed an open-mouthed kiss by his deeply carved Adonis belt; she could just barely feel the heat coming from his member radiating towards her left ear.

"Because we don't want you thinking that you can only have one of us, Naruto-kun." Naruto's eyes widened and quickly shifted over to Sakura as she spoke, even while her lips sat mere inches away from his purpled glans.

"So instead of _you_ having _us_ and worrying about which one you'd have to choose, Ino and I will have you to share between us instead. That way…" Sakura stopped herself mid-verse to sigh with lustful pleasure as she brushed her cheek against his shaft and allowed a small rivulet of her saliva to crawl over her bottom lip, "…We all win."

As much as Naruto wished to display his scepticism to the idea, good as it may have seemed, the mind-bursting pleasure and inadvertent torture coming from between his legs reduced his vocals to nothing but mindless sighs and groans. Sakura and Ino, now level to each other once again, knew that the time for talking was over. All they wanted now…was Naruto.

The jinchuuriki's ensuing growl of ecstasy almost rattled the walls as he felt two sources of lubricated pleasure independently go at either side of his shaft. Against his natural response to the pleasure, Naruto fought to open one eye and look down. Ino had lowered her head and started to frivolously lash out at the base of Naruto's penis with her somewhat over-salivated tongue, while Sakura tried, with very energetic movements, to wrap the whole of her own wet muscle around the circumference of his shining, blood-engorged head. The pinkette occasionally finished some of her licks off with a kiss, which only sought to further both Naruto's pleasure and the area of his skin that was covered with her rapidly cooling saliva.

Sakura was in disbelief that her first labial contact with Naruto would be against his hard-on, but the feeling of her soft lips being squashed against his hardened skin only made her panties' resilience to her bodily discharges more futile. She had barely been at her escapades for a minute, and already her slick vagina was calling out to be seen to, thus increasing Sakura's desire for the man she was heartily gorging her lust upon. Ino was in much the same state; she had already come to this stage with her new love, but the fire inside her stomach that took away more of her resilience every time she stroked at his flesh or cupped his testes with the palm of her left hand demanded better levels of pleasure…and much more of it.

Sakura couldn't take it anymore. Filled with the desire of feeling everything Naruto had to offer, she stood up and hopped onto the bed next to the jinchuuriki, who kept his eyes closed from the pleasure engulfing his erection. Within seconds, he felt the mattress dip on either side of his waist as it took a weight, and was immediately suffocated by a kiss that pushed him onto his back. He retracted his eyelids and saw only closed eyes and a large curtain of pink hair surrounding his face. Unfortunately, all the erotic pleasures he was currently feeling meant that Naruto could not savour the moment of kissing the very first person that he loved; nonetheless, he was still more than happy at the development. Sakura had finally discovered the one thing she had wanted for the past six months: to feel Naruto's lips, despite the fact that she had already had her mouth around his penis beforehand. It was pure bliss, his mouth was a lot softer than she had first imagined, but she couldn't have been happier that its undivided attention was focussed on kissing her.

Ino was grateful for Sakura's re-positioning, because it allowed her to have complete control over the marvellous tool that she was tauntingly licking from base to apex. Although she could tell that her ministrations were fully appreciated, thanks to the muffled moans coming from the bed and the clenching fists lying upon the mattress, she wanted to do more not just for Naruto's pleasure, but for hers as well. With that in mind, Ino's head descended and fully wrapped around Naruto's glans before slowly sinking downwards. Every repetition of her ensuing up-down motion allowed her to take more and more of her prize into her awaiting oral canal. To top this off, she quickly moved one hand behind her back and unclasped her bra, which Ino had begun to see as more of a hindrance to her ultimate goal than help. As she shimmied her body to shake off the offending garment, she took her time in once again bringing her tongue along Naruto's erection, sampling the feeling of every bump and depression caused by the intricate pattern of veins and capillaries that squiggled past one another just millimetres under the pink-tinted skin. Suddenly feeling a small emptiness, Ino's lips were soon returning to the task of attempting to practically swallow Naruto's cock.

"Naruto-kuuun…please…" On top of the bed, Naruto and Sakura's lip lock hadn't properly progressed, but the impatience of a certain medic changed that. With only the small amount of whispered words, Sakura used her actions to explain her desires…her raw needs…to the man underneath her by grabbing his right wrist with her left hand and sliding it over her slim stomach, subtly pushing his fingertips inside the lining of her lace and silk panties. Naruto was slightly disappointed that he was forced to forgo the more romantic sides of caressing, but the way in which Sakura forced her head forward into her kisses told him that she was in no mood to beat about the bush…figuratively of course. Naruto had heard that delicacy was key when it came to manipulating the female sexual organs, and so he let his middle and index finger slowly slide onto Sakura's nether lips, which he was surprised to find were already moist in sexual anticipation. Higher up the pinkette's body, Naruto had decided to put use to his other hand despite the ongoing oral pleasures bestowed upon his erection by his fellow blonde. His fingers were soon squeezing Sakura's right breast with a soft grip; but he, too, had an impatient streak just like anybody else. That impatient streak came out as Naruto slipped down the fabric covering Sakura's breast, letting the creamy mound fall forward and stop with a small jiggle, before performing the same action to her left breast with the same hand, since his other was presently occupied with exploring and caressing the outside of the medic's soaking flower.

Naruto knew he couldn't resist, and so put all his energy into encircling Sakura's left bud with his lips and shooting his tongue out to flick it around inside his wet and humid oral cavity; to top it all off, he harshly pinched her abandoned right nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Naruto only increased his three separate ministrations as he heard the sweet sound of the pinkette's high-pitched moan echoing throughout the room; oh, how he had dreamed of being the one to make Sakura moan like that. Just as he had made the thought, Naruto was groaning aloud himself when he felt an inexplainable softness and warmth wrap around his painfully hard shaft, while he could make out the familiar, smooth texture of a tongue running over his glans.

Ino, like Sakura, knew she was losing herself in her own lust and perversion thanks to the sight, touch and taste of the magnificent piece of flesh now sliding between her deliciously soft breasts, which could narrowly reach around Naruto's two-inch girth. She held a certain pride in the knowledge that she had undoubtedly beaten Sakura in chest size, and that she had the upper hand when any sexual use of her mammaries was a necessity.

"Aaah!" Sakura screamed with her back arched and face looking up to the ceiling, eyes closed in complete ecstasy. Apparently, the act of Ino sliding Naruto's cock into her cleavage gave her fellow blonde such pleasure that his fingers had constricted once more. In doing so, the middle and index fingers of his right hand had sunk into Sakura's hot and fluid-saturated vaginal canal; a movement that seemed to force Sakura's arousal to skyrocket. Even as she continued to move her body up and down in order to provide the most erotic feelings with her compressed tits, Ino looked up and saw Sakura's hips undulating back and forth to get the most out of Naruto's fingers.

"Na…Naruto-kun!" Sakura cried out between heaving breaths as the jinchuuriki's tongue continued its attacks on her severely stiff nipples. Naruto felt Sakura's hips rolling over his fingers, and decided to add his own pumping to the wet and intimate contact; Sakura moaned after every inward movement and let her chest push further towards Naruto's mouth as her breaths deepened. Although she enjoyed making Naruto feel as good as he did, Ino was also starting to feel left out. She had been so focussed on Naruto's throbbing manhood that she never bothered keeping an eye on her own panties.

Pulling her chest away from the pillar of flesh, which was twitching even more than when it was first revealed, Ino quickly and uncaringly brushed the fingers of her left hand over her own maidenhood, and found no area covering her slit to be dry. She found herself shivering as her finger passed just underneath her clitoris, further stoking the fire inside her stomach and forcing her mind to reject all logical thought. Her psyche had become so enraptured by lust that she only wanted two things for the rest of the night: Naruto's cock, and the substance that it expelled. With that in mind, she lowered her head and sank half of Naruto's manhood down her mouth without any leeway. Her right hand held him steady as she let her lips rub against his rock-hard penis with every upward and downward motion of her head, allowing her tongue to continue lubricating it with her body's excessive excretion of saliva, some of which seeped from beneath her clamping lips and coated what her mouth couldn't yet venture to. On top of the moans, sighs, deep breaths and soft squelching sound of Naruto's fingers invading Sakura's vagina; the loud slurping sound of Ino greedily sucking at every reachable inch of Naruto's cock only accomplished a greater erotic ambience. In her lower area, the blonde's hand had crawled under her panties and started to furiously rub her labia, imagining that the hard rod penetrating her mouth was performing the same action to her virgin pussy.

"Ino-chan…I…I'm…!" Naruto called out with a severe hitch after pulling his lips away from Sakura's. The medic was too embroiled in her own Naruto-induced pleasure to be annoyed that Ino would instigate the man's first orgasm, instead she simply pumped her hips faster, and coaxed Naruto's wrist and fingers into moving with greater speed and vigour. The two lying on the bed looked into each other's half-open eyes, breaths intermingling in front of their swollen lips, and wordlessly projecting everything they wanted to say. That, however, didn't stop Sakura from whispering an 'I love you' underneath her heavy pants. Naruto was so close to the edge that his hips instinctively thrust upward, not only pushing himself further down Ino's gullet, but giving her the cue she wanted in order for her to use a special little technique.

The human penis was no alien to either of the medics, as they had studied sexual anatomy as part of their training in both the written and physical state. Above that, both of them had had to fix a few, Sakura more than Ino. Ino quickly brought her left hand back, being all too careful to keep Naruto's tool between her lips, and pumped it with green chakra using her Mystical Palm technique. She pushed her hand forward and touched the tips of her index and middle finger against his perineum and forced a small amount of chakra through his skin and hitting his prostate. Naruto felt the warm, electric-like spark from Ino's fingers and could hold himself no longer.

"Argh!" Ino became aware of the rapid twitching of Naruto's cock betwixt her lips and felt a wave of pride wash over her as his seed shot over her tongue. She'd read the sexual help sections in a few magazines and was led to believe that a man's semen was bitter and even mildly salty. She found this to be partially true as more and more of Naruto's essence spewed into her mouth and over her taste buds. She guessed that Naruto must have eaten a considerable amount of fruit or something with minor sweetness, as it reflected in the tangy and even minutely citrus-esque taste of his seminal plasma. Ino's muffled moan, which vibrated down Naruto's cock and made his hips jerk again, reflected the blonde's happiness at the…gift…she had received from the birthday boy.

"I'm coming!" Sakura screeched in blind pleasure as she bathed in the incredible feeling of Naruto's fingers stroking her inner walls. Naruto lifted his head up and planted multiple open-mouthed kisses along her neck as he waited for the pinkette to ride out the wave of orgasmic rapture that had rapidly heated her skin and her dripping core. In order to keep his other hand occupied, Naruto reached behind Sakura's back and desperately fumbled with her bra strap, although subsequently failing to find any leeway. Sakura didn't give any thought to her clothing, even as she felt another pair of hands swiftly separate the clips over her spine and slipped her bra down her arms; she was too embroiled in the happiness that she had been brought to an amazing release by the man who now held her heart. The next thing Sakura knew, she was locking lips with the other female in the room. Sakura's surprise couldn't be seen for the pleasure her half-lidded stare exuberated as Naruto watched both medics lashing their tongues at one another. From the relatively low lighting in the room, he couldn't see the additional substance that was flowing between their mouths.

Sakura's eyes narrowed sharply in a wincing fashion as she felt the slimy but slightly sweet substance lap into her mouth courtesy of her fellow medic. Sakura soon realised what the intrusive substance was, and relaxed her face as she sampled the tang of Naruto's discharge. Ino pulled away, but was further stunned as Sakura lunged her head forward and tried to obtain more of the essence of the one she loved. After another ten-seconds of tongue battling, Ino gently nudged her friend back and smirked.

"I had a feeling you'd want to taste him", she whispered before giving Sakura the hint that she was to relinquish her position by lightly pushing her shoulder to the side. With an upturned frown, Sakura slowly lifted her left leg back over Naruto's body to join her right, leaving her teammate's body completely open to the air.

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto feebly called out before slowly opening his eyes and seeing a different pair of the breasts to the ones he'd previously been fondling and suckling upon, but he was too enveloped by his exploding synapses and the different size and shape of the newcomer(s) that he couldn't think to say anything other than the names of the two girls currently sat next to his naked self on his bed.

"Ino-chan…that was…unbelievable." Naruto got no downtime as he was pulled up by his shoulders and directed to the head and backboard of the bed. Although his muscles felt like jelly, Naruto knew the sight of these two stunningly attractive young women; topless with their attentive nipples in the air for anybody to see, and the sodden patches on their panties, was something that would keep him hard all night against his conscious will. Both girls knelt next to each other as they appraisingly stared at Naruto's rigid member, his glans still a red-purple and prepared along with the rest of his fleshy pole. Ino made the first move by crawling up to her newly shared lover and straddling his waist much like Sakura had done. Naruto had already placed his body and pillows in such a way that the backboard held his whole upper torso at a slight incline, but it was enough for him to seem almost vertical.

"If you think that was unbelievable…then the rest will feel like the best dream you've ever had", Ino seductively murmured on Naruto's lips before kissing him again. Both blondes had the same idea as each of them placed one of their hands on the sides of Ino's last layer. Ino let a frail smile crawl across her face as the half-soaked material was peeled away, quickly cooling her moist vagina as the ambient air touched it. The sensation made Ino gasp with the shiver that shot up her spine and to her occipital lobe. Sakura didn't like the fact that she was being put aside again, and so crawled up next to the two and placed her right hand on Naruto's chest.

"Hey, Pig, I haven't had a chance at his…thing…yet." Sakura didn't know if her new blush at having to vocalise Naruto's anatomy was showing, but her voice definitely displayed her slight embarrassment. Ino looked over with a tiny frown as she let her hand fall between her body and Naruto's, taking a full wringing grasp of the man's member and making Naruto gasp.

"I haven't even _come_ yet, Forehead!" Ino's harsh tone was dripping with desperation and lust, easily putting forward the blonde's eagerness to have her internal fire satisfied. "Besides…we'll both be getting a lot more turns, won't we Naruto-kun?" The look she shot Naruto 'persuaded' the befuddled jinchuuriki into nodding, lest he get smacked into the mattress.

"But…what about protection? I mean…ah…" Naruto tried to put forward his argument, but the descent of Ino's body meant that his head was brushing against her labia, eliciting a moan from both of them, "…I don't want anything to happen to y-" The jinchuuriki was suddenly silenced by a lithe finger pressing against his lips, squashing them back against his face. He only moved his eyes to the perpetrator, following a cream-coloured arm up to Sakura's pink hair and jade eyes that shone with love and appreciation.

"Bless you for being so considerate, Naruto-kun", Sakura flashed a playful pout before leaning down to the man's ear and whispering, "We're both using a contraceptive jutsu taught to every kunoichi over sixteen. It's got an eight hour window of effectiveness, so you can come anywhere…you…want." Sakura punctuated her mind-blowing insinuation by slipping her tongue into Naruto's ear. The sensation was extremely weird for the jinchuuriki, but it was quickly dwarfed by the searing heat and moisture coating his glans as Ino let her weight go and slowly dropped herself on his length. During their discussion outside, both girls revealed to one another that all of their years in training and combat had rid them of their hymens during their early years of puberty, which they felt would make the feeling of their first time that much easier to bear.

"Ino-chan…are you sure?" Naruto couldn't help but bare his teeth at the feeling of Ino's warmth surrounding his girth. Ino's head had fallen back as she tried to quell the small amount of pain that accompanied the stretching of her opening. Moving her head back to a level position, she placed her hands on Naruto's stomach and smiled, the imagery of which changed the meaning of the small tears teetering over her lower eyelids. They weren't tears of pain anymore, as Naruto first thought; they were tears of pleasure and pure, unbridled happiness.

"More than anything in my life."

Naruto's heart was thumping in his ears; never, did he think that any girl, let alone two, would love him enough to allow him the ultimately rare opportunity of claiming her/their virginity; it spoke more than any words ever could as to how true and how powerful both Ino and Sakura's feelings for him were. Although Naruto's thoughts were of love, completeness and contention, he soon found his mind being wiped clean again as Ino let her whole weight go. Two of the teenagers in the room moaned from the sensation of having their genital areas being filled or squeezed by the other, while the third person in the room gasped as the hips of both blondes rubbed together, transforming the duo into a singularity of erotic senses that prioritised nothing but the two of them. Sakura, taking advantage of the tightly shut eyelids of her best friend and her remaining teammate, slipped in behind the former and circled her hands around the young woman's waist.

Instinctively, Ino titled her head to the side, which gave Sakura a perfect view of her neck, as well as gave her a window through which she could see what the pleasure was doing to Naruto. She saw his lightly tanned chest, covered in an amazing sheen of sweat, rise and fall at such a rapid pace that Sakura wondered if he'd had a second orgasm from simply entering Ino. Every single time Naruto opened his eyes, he was sure that he was going to wake up within the next coming seconds, because each new image that filled his sight was more beautiful than the last. First it was Ino lying on his bed with her hair lying flat and spread out behind her (clothed at the time), displaying the beauty that Naruto knew she was hiding, then it was both Sakura and Ino stood in front of him with nothing on except their underwear; now, it was a naked Ino writhing in ecstasy, impaled on his hips, while Sakura knelt behind her with a small smile as her hands slowly crawled up Ino's stomach and timidly cupped both of her breasts, making the female blonde eject a sigh of pure bliss.

With only a melodic exhalation, and no words spoken, Ino's hips rose as she shifted her weight onto her hands, which pushed into Naruto's body and only added to the senses crashing through his whole being. Because of Ino's inexperience, she found herself to be subconsciously squeezing around Naruto's cock, which only made her happier when the noises emanating from Naruto's mouth gained volume. She could almost commit every blood vessel on his throbbing manhood to memory as her lower lips moved around his girth, stroking her inner walls and bringing some form of delightful sound from her voice box.

"Ino-chan…amazing…" Naruto murmured under his breath, gripping Ino's hips and assisting her path as she continued to rise and fall on his rock-hard erection. Ino felt so complete, so physically fulfilled that she couldn't put up with the mellow pace both she and Naruto were pretending to deem as acceptable.

"Naruto-kun! More…please!" Ino desperately breathed out before she used her movements to make her desires known. Without any communication, she urged her thighs to work harder, lifting herself higher and dropping herself with greater force, pushing Naruto's manhood further inside her, achieving a scream of satisfaction upon her first drop. Naruto started to move his own hips, his thoughts focussing on giving Ino more attention as payback for her incredible first blowjob. Sakura was minutely disappointed that she couldn't be Naruto's first, but she noticed in how both blondes maintained eye contact that their connection was somehow deeper than she first thought. The pinkette knew Naruto's face all too well; he was looking at Ino in exactly the same way that he looked at her. Still feeling left out, Sakura pushed her body forward, squashing her breasts into Ino's back and reaching around to pinch the blonde's nipples. It was easier said than done, as Ino's tits jumped with every thrust from Naruto's hips, which forced her body upward and shook her chest. Naruto himself had moved his left hand up and grasped Ino's bounding mammary, allowing her nipple to rub against his palm and generally doing his best to focus on Ino's satisfaction. The ensuing gasp told the jinchuuriki that he was doing the right job.

"Oh Kami!" Ino's cry not only reflected the feeling that Naruto was bestowing upon her body, but also from Sakura's exploring hands. She leaned forward and placed her hands against the top of the backboard as means of supporting herself. The angle of her body exaggerated the sway of her breasts and brought them closer to Naruto's face, tempting the jinchuuriki into wrapping his lips around her right nipple. Sakura had decided to let her medical know-how manipulate Ino's body in a much softer but more effective manner. She lowered her swollen lips to the blonde's shoulder and licked from the top of her trapezium upwards, traversing across her neck, past her jaw line and upward toward her earlobe before taking said earlobe between her teeth with a light grip. Her oral skill was not the only thing being implemented.

Ino felt that her moment with Naruto, filling her to the brim with his manhood as he vacuumed his mouth to suck on her pert teat, couldn't feel any better. That was soon to change as she soon felt a third hand crushing her left breast into her body as the fingers attached to it pinched her nipple harshly.

"Haah!" Ino shrieked inside a loud gasp which gained substantial intensity as a fourth hand took the curved path down her toned midsection, the fingers curving its way through her thin strip of darker blonde pubic hair, before slipping over Ino's self-lubricated skin and flicking ever-so-softly over her clit. The action made Ino's next moan vibrate her chest, forcing an interesting feeling to seep from her soft mounds into the hands gripping her. Naruto felt Ino's pussy tighten around him and push him all the further towards his second release of the night. Every single sight above him added to his building arousal: Ino's beautifully round, soft breasts, leaping with every enthusiastic thrust but inches away from his face; the way her skin glistened with her arousal-induced sweat; the slick feeling of entering her heated channel, sheathing himself fully to the hilt; the beautiful sounds leaving her parted lips as he thrust into her…

Thinking about all of those individual quirks, combined with the velvety feeling of Ino's walls completely surrounding his pulsing member, Naruto was struggling to keep himself restrained.

"I…I'm going to…", Naruto's vocal chords strained. Ino, for the first time in their genital union, brought Naruto into a searing kiss, tasting his gums with her tongue once more whilst continuing to impale herself on him. She pulled back only enough to fill her sight with Naruto's bright blue irises, breathing heavily onto his face and feeling his own heated pants cover her lips like a layer of silk. She quickly moved her hands from the backboard to the tops of Naruto's shoulders, feeling the slickness of his skin from his sweat and his how his body shifted from the impact of her hard landings.

"In…inside, Naruto…please…" Her eyes said everything, Naruto could see the want, the lust, the desire; all of it…reserved for him. His thrusts became erratic as he tried to continue his sampling of all the amazing senses by holding off his inevitable orgasm. Sakura could tell from the frequency of Ino's high-pitched moans that she was also teetering on the precipice of coital sanity. Since she was there to assist for the time being, the pinkette anxiously rubbed Ino's clitoris with her index finger, occasionally brushing against Naruto's pre-ejaculate-covered cock as it continuously hammered into her friend's vagina.

"Coming…I…aaah!" Ino quickly blurted out before she succumbed to the multiple points of pleasurable contact roaming her body.

"Ino-chan!" Unable to hold back any longer, Naruto had no choice but to trust Sakura's information and let his passion go. Naruto's arms circled all the way around Ino's waist, pulling her body into him as she sat all the way down on his hips, pushing his ejaculation further inward. Sakura watched in awe as Naruto's hips jumped with every spurt that burst from his cock, a movement that also made Ino's body twitch as her own orgasmic release leaked down and further saturated both the bed sheets and the penis of the man spewing his seed into her.

"Naruto…" Ino hissed in delight as she felt the warmth of Naruto's semen splash against her canal walls and cervix; the knowledge that she was guaranteed to avoid pregnancy thanks to the jutsu made her all the happier that she and Naruto had bonded on the highest level with Sakura's help. She dropped her head down and fiercely kissed the blonde still embedded deep inside her. She knew she had made the right choice as she tasted Naruto's sweat across his lips as well as feel the breaths from the seductive groans coming from his throat in his moment of cooling off. Naruto was in disbelief; he was waiting for the inevitable moment that he woke up and found out it was all a dream. But no, the wet heat he felt around his cock, the stiff nipples and soft breasts rubbing against his chest, and the tongue ferociously writhing against his lips and teeth…they were all real. The latter of those feelings ended as Ino pulled away, but only until their noses were touching.

"I love you…" Ino said breathlessly as her hands slid up Naruto's neck, her left ending up cupping his cheek and the fingers of her right raking through his thick hair. Naruto never felt so warm; not just in the physical sense, but mentally as his heart lifted from hearing Ino repeat her earlier confession. Naruto knew now that Sakura felt the same, and that made the moment twice as special; that both of them were willing to give their bodies, as well as their love. Naruto knew his own feelings, and couldn't deny them to the young woman he had just consummated a relationship with.

"I love you, too, Ino-chan", Naruto breathed with a crack and embraced Ino's lips again. His eyes were closed before he saw the single tear trailing down her cheek. Naruto opened them again as he felt a third hand glide across his chest, and a fourth stroking his shoulder. On top of that, he felt two mildly hard points touching his left bicep and pectoral. He looked over and saw that Sakura was leaning flush against him, giving his eyes all the attention she had to offer. Her emerald orbs seemed over moistened from impending emotions, and her thoughts became voiced.

"Naruto-kun…my feelings are the same as Ino's…" Naruto was already fully aware of this due to the pinkette's loud confession by the front door, but he still saw a small amount of distress in Sakura's eyes. Before he could ask about the apparent problem, Sakura was making it known.

"Am I…still precious to you?" Sakura's answer was a strong and passion-filled kiss from the blonde whom she was staring at, even as Ino sat in silent bliss on his hips, sighing into the crook of the man's neck. As Naruto had said many times, he knew that being honest with himself was the way to handle the moment. Sakura chocked with emotion as she felt her favourite blonde's tongue gently stroke her own. She let out a tiny whimper as said blonde retracted his head.

"I wasn't lying, Sakura-chan", Naruto tried to say confidently, but the energy he had put into his first proper sexual encounter made him breathless. "I loved you for a long time…and a feeling like mine…doesn't just vanish into thin air." Sakura did and didn't understand what Naruto was saying, but that only made her more concerned as to how he would answer. "Even with everything we've been through…I still love you…and that makes you very precious to me." Sakura sobbed with glee at the admission before pulling Naruto's head to hers for another kiss.

Ino was too out of breath to speak, and so she smiled as the teammates admitted their own love for the other. Despite the happiness of the moment, Ino understood Naruto's problem. He loved them both, and they both loved him. Sure, Sakura had told Naruto that she and Ino could share him, but what would that do to his feelings? Even now, Ino's heart felt slightly downtrodden at hearing Naruto confess to her friend, but she figured that Sakura must have felt the same at hearing his confession to herself. The situation, in Ino's mind, was becoming complicated. She simply watched as the two traded apologies and small explanations between kisses, all the while enjoying the feeling of Naruto's amazingly stiff cock buried inside her.

'_Hold on…'_ Ino quickly thought in realisation, _'…How is this guy still hard?'_

"Please, Naruto-kun…love me…" Sakura whispered as she planted a light kiss on Naruto's cheek, "…Touch me…" She said over his lips, guiding his hand to her delectably round and taut ass, which she was no longer covering with her soiled panties. Her head moved across and licked the rim of his ear before she deeply whispered with a not-so-subtle desperation.

"_Fuck _me…I need you…I _want_ you…" Naruto froze at Sakura's sudden lack of reserved attitude. He knew right there that his teammate and second lover wasn't taking no for an answer; then again…why would he say no at all?

"Sakura-chan…" Naruto said in disbelief as Sakura moved over to Ino, who knew it was now the end of her 'turn'. The blonde slowly pulled herself up and let Naruto slip out of her still-tight sheath, albeit with the latter's almost sentient reluctance. The buxom blonde moaned in disappointment as the feeling of completeness vanished from her lower region; but on the upside, Ino knew that a part of Naruto was still inside her, and that made her smile. Sakura watched in amazement as Naruto's member swayed as Ino's pussy relinquished its grasp of it, but the marvellous, shining organ remained standing tall, making the pinkette question just how much stamina the knucklehead had. The thought of that thing sawing in and out of her body made Sakura blush, but at the same time inhale in anticipation.

"You're still so hard…" Naruto noticed his own anatomical situation, but said nothing as he himself was surprised by his sexual persistence…maybe, he thought, he followed more after Jiraiya than he first believed. Naruto's thoughts were quickly shunned as he felt a hand tenderly wrap around his length, easily sliding along the entirety of its shape thanks to the lubrication of Ino's discharges. Naruto soon found himself being led by his cock into rolling to his left thanks to the hand that had tightened its grip, it seemed he was too embroiled in said hand that he didn't notice the person it belonged to lie flat on her back. Soon enough, Naruto was on his hands and knees between Sakura's legs, said woman's hand stroking his length with spread fingers.

"You might want to know, Naruto-kun", Naruto looked to his left and saw Ino lying on her side with a content smile on her face, eyes half-lidded from her lost energy and her right and left hands innocently stroking at her still-dripping pussy and right nipple respectively, "That underwear was the only thing that she had on underneath that kimono". Naruto looked back with a raised eyebrow, stunned at the fact. Sakura had the decency to blush, even as her whole body was hot and full of colour.

"Were you…planning on something, Sakura-chan?" Naruto ironically asked with a cheeky grin despite the current position he was in. Sakura reached up with her free right hand and pulled Naruto's head down to hers.

"It worked, didn't it?" The medic asked with a smile before running her tongue along Naruto's cheek and tightening her grip on the hardness of the man between her legs. Naruto groaned at the pressure being exerted against his sensitive hardness, the sound of which made Sakura give a few energetic pumps to tease him further. The hands lying next to Sakura's head clenched and crushed the sections of pillow that were in their reach, and Sakura was taken aback by how undeniably hot the blonde looked as his exposed teeth shone in the low light and how his hair shimmered with his sweat and framed his unblemished face. Sakura finished her ministrations and wordlessly apologised for the tease with a kiss, but she kept Naruto's head near. The man made the position more comfortable by lowering himself onto his elbows, bringing his chest mere inches away from Sakura's rigid nipples.

"Take me, let me feel you", Sakura growled as she let her aroused state of mind take control. The hand around Naruto's girth pulled his hips further in until his glans sat poised at her opening, briefly rubbing past her clit as a sample of what was to inevitably come. The contact made Sakura's hips automatically buck as a gasp escaped her mouth. Ino had begun her recovery and opted to help Sakura in mutual thanks for the support she had silently provided; she shifted through the thirty-centimetre block of air between them until their skin began to rub against the others. In order to allow Ino room, Naruto lifted himself up again, bringing himself back so his knees were his only support. Naruto occupied his hands by softly caressing the legs he was knelt between, starting from Sakura's hips, over her thighs and resting on her bent knees; his erection, still going inhumanely strong after two mind-numbing orgasms, was lying flat over her pubic mound. Sakura started gnawing on her lower lip in a mixture of excitement and fear of the coming pain that she had heard so many women talk about.

"Don't worry…he'll take care of you", Ino comforted her friend by gently stroking her stomach before looking up to Naruto, who was calmly looking at her, "He did for me." Naruto felt slightly embarrassed as Ino complimented him with a bright smile, despite the fact he and two of his past academy graduates were naked on the same bed.

"Naruto-kun", Sakura gasped, "I can't wait any longer…put it in…" Sakura was somebody who knew what she wanted, and the look that Naruto saw in her eyes told him that he didn't need to ask twice. Pulling his hips back, Naruto was about to bring a hand down to hold his member steady, but already found both young women with their fingers wrapped around him: Ino for the sake of helping, and Sakura because she wanted no downtime in getting to feel what Ino had experienced. Naruto saw the lust and need in both pairs of eyes, he couldn't believe that both hotheaded and loud girls had suddenly become such gentle and strangely perverted beauties.

With not another word, Naruto's bulbous head was pushing Sakura's labia aside, earning a gasp from the kunoichi. Sakura found a somewhat delicious pain shoot through her body as Naruto entered her at a pace that wasn't sating her desire to have him ravage her as her mind had fantasised about when she had watched Ino ride him. A sharp buck of her hips found Naruto going from a quarter inside to just over half within a fraction of a second.

"Ah!" Sakura wailed in a mix of pain and fulfilment. She couldn't believe that she had come this far with a man that she used to beat multiple times a day as a child. His cock was inside her, taking her innocence and purity, stroking against her inner walls, pulsing in sync with his heartbeat…and she _loved_ it.

Naruto was in disbelief, he was two inches and closing into being fully embedded in his only female teammate; the wonderful girl that he had dreamed of bringing happiness - whilst hoping she would return it - had her legs wrapped around his waist as she practically begged him to ram his cock inside her. Just as he had thought of that, Naruto felt his hips rubbing against those of the girl he was intent on pleasing. He was all the way in, utterly and completely buried in the young woman he always admired.

"Sakura-chan…" Naruto sighed, enraptured with the second unique warmth surrounding him. The way Sakura's rib cage stuck out from her arched back actually increased her erotic attractiveness. Ino leaned across and claimed Sakura's lips as her way of assisting in the pain; however, the pinkette must have forgotten to turn on her pain receptors, either that or she had learned how to control them, because she eagerly began to shift her hips around Naruto's sensual organ, wordlessly hinting for him to move – what with her talking organ being occupied by that of her friend. Sakura moaned into Ino's mouth as she felt Naruto's retraction, as well during the moment she felt him fill up her eager and wet channel once more.

"Naruto…oh Kami…" Sakura exhaled in bliss as she interlocked her ankles and forced Naruto's hips further in. Subconsciously, her mind seemed desperate to keep her teammate as close to her as possible, in both body and spirit. Naruto, for the sake of the moment, wanted to keep his pace calm so that Sakura could have a full feeling of what was happening both in and outside of her body.

Sakura knew a lot about the human body: muscle and skeletal structures, tenketsu, organs, pressure points, ligaments and much more…but nothing Tsunade taught her had prepared her for the sheer wave of thrilling rapture that swarmed her senses once her vaginal area had been completely stimulated. She had masturbated before, but the shallow depth her fingers could reach combined with just the stimulation of her clitoris couldn't lift a candle to the amazing fulfilment provided by the solid piece of man sawing in and out of her body. However, that sawing just wasn't doing it.

"More!" Sakura cried out her lustful desperation, "Harder, Naruto-kun!" Naruto's eyes showed a flinch as old memories of the pinkette's previous bossiness came back to him. Naruto wanted to treasure the moment, but he realised that his time for subtlety was over; this was about Sakura's pleasure and what _she _wanted. Naruto pushed his back muscles into thrusting harder, bringing his hips as far back as Sakura's locked feet would permit and pushing back in with equal force. Ino watched with amazement at the way Sakura's body jumped from Naruto's inward thrusts, how her eyes scrunched in coital bliss and the way her mouth hung permanently open as if to silently moan. In being honest to herself, she found the sight to be even more arousing than the image of just the man himself. She figured that the sight of Naruto fucking her had pushed Sakura into a minute state of heat. Gentle sex would not do the job.

"Gah!" Sakura felt Naruto hit a special spot deep inside her on the top of her canal, sending an exquisite shock up her spine and making her hips buck. Sakura's mind was jelly; she had no idea that sex would seem so pleasurable, even for a woman. Now she understood why some people of her gender could be as perverted as men. She didn't care about poise anymore, she wanted the feeling of being sent into pure happiness by the one she loved, to have him shoot his very being into her body; and above all, she wanted him to _know_ that she wanted it.

"Fuck me, Naruto-kun! Faster! Harder!" Naruto decided not to question her requests with his body, and so he felt inclined to sate her present desires. Ino realised that Sakura needed no help. The way she moaned, screamed and effectively ordered her teammate to pump into her with everything his stamina would allow told her that the better medic knew what her body wanted and would accept nothing less. Naruto's mind suddenly made a challenge of the situation, and he knew he would never turn down a challenge as enrapturing as giving sexual pleasure to his second lover. He knew he had the energy and put it straight to use. With every amount of strength his back muscles could give, Naruto rammed his member into Sakura's eagerly awaiting pussy, sending an unbelievable feeling through his body as her soft, wet walls stroked every inch of his cock.

Sakura's short, sharp scream almost deafened Ino, who watched with mesmerised eyes as the pinkette's body violently jolted with every inward thrust. Ino couldn't help but smother her mouth over her friend's right nipple as both jumped from the massive impact of their hips. The slapping sound coming from Naruto and Sakura's slamming hips added even further to the debauched noises echoing off the walls, that as well as Naruto's repeated groans and pants. Sakura felt the knot in her mound tightening its last inch, and she knew she was going to blow from the sheer power that Naruto was smashing into her sopping pussy, which only added to the lubrication of Naruto's cock and made it easier to slam into her again, hence creating a beautiful, sensual cycle.

"Sakura-chan…can I…?" Naruto cut off his unfinished question to moan more at Sakura's amazing warmth and sheer tightness. She was everything he had imagined and more, he knew he was right to have wanted her. But now, he was even more grateful as he had two beautiful women that could give him love and pleasure.

"Yes! Come inside me! Please!" Naruto didn't need to hear anything else. He knew what she wanted, and he was happy to oblige.

"I'm…I'm coming…Naruto!" Without any more forewarning, the knot burst, and Naruto felt a new, warmer liquid flow over his erection, and he knew he was at his limit. Seeing Sakura in her complete blissful state and hearing her moans furthered his arousal, and finally pushed him over the edge of his sanity.

"Nngh!" Naruto grunted loudly and with mild strain as he let his dam burst for the third time in 30 minutes. Ino, having already experienced the feeling of Naruto's orgasm shooting inside her, thought back to their moment as she watched Sakura jolt with Naruto's twitching body. Sakura, on the other hand, had hit seventh heaven. Feeling the hot seed of her love pumping further inside her and heading to her womb was a great feeling. She had wanted it ever since Naruto had fingered her, and she knew the wait – as well as the immense, pleasurable sex – was undoubtedly worth it.

Naruto held Sakura tight against his cock until he knew no more of his essence could come forth for that moment. Feeling completely worn out by the force with which he had drilled into Sakura, he quickly pulled out and landed flat on his back like a ragdoll with a loud sigh. He felt a small amount of tiredness overcome him, but his eyes soon widened as he felt the mattress fabric compress once again as the weight applied to it drew closer to his body. His eyes remained pasted on the ceiling, but the sight those eyes saw was soon filled by blonde and pink hair. The girls' heads were upside down in relation to his body and sight, but that didn't stop Sakura from lowering her head and giving Naruto a cute peck on his open and panting lips. Ino made her own kiss deeper, but Naruto could still sense the care and sensuality behind it.

"Happy birthday, Naruto-kun." Both girls quietly chirped. Naruto smiled, but his face soon fell in shock as Sakura said the last sensible thing of the night.

"But your present's not finished yet."

* * *

For the next three hours, the trio continued their sexual adventures, exploring their boundaries, likes, dislikes and even hidden fetishes that their consciousnesses had suppressed. All of them finally knew what it was like to experience a bond that excelled every other one that they presently held. Ino knew her mind had chosen the best man for her. He was loyal, supportive, friendly, incredibly good looking and even more incredible in the bedroom. Sakura's initial hope had been to seduce Naruto based on the lingerie underneath her kimono, but the outcome of finding Naruto and Ino had been so much better. Part of her was having a hard time believing she had ended up giving herself to Naruto, but behind the ramen talk and stupid grins, he had a lot of traits that she had wished to see in Sasuke. Only once Sakura had passed out from her pure bliss-induced exhaustion did they agree it was time to rest.

Naruto couldn't have been happier and even more touched by the willing sacrifices that both girls had made to show him how much they cared. It was, without a doubt, the best birthday present he had received to date. However, he now had a mind-bending predicament.

He loved them both, they both loved him, and all three of them knew it. But which girl would he end up potentially spending his life with?

* * *

**Just so everybody knows, the poll on who the third woman will be during the sequel has been decided. I am proud to announce that the readers have nominated Temari as the woman to round off the 'Just Reward' group. It was a close call, and Temari ended up beating Samui by only three votes.**

**CONTRADICTION EXPLANATION: During Ino and Sakura's argument, you'll see that I said that Sakura had told Ino about her romantic interest in Naruto two months before the time of the fic. However, at the start, I wrote in Ino's perspective that she thought that Sakura was still into Sasuke. Yes, I made a blatantly stupid error here, but I will offer you my answer: Ino forgot. That's right, Ino herself was so into her own desire for Naruto that she completely forgot about Sakura's admission. And when I wrote that Ino found the loophole? Yeah, basically, she suddenly remembered the whole conversation. I know it's a major screw up, but just remember that this fic isn't meant to be taken completely seriously.**

**CONTRADICTION EXPLANATION #2: I just noticed a second stupid contradiction in the story. I mentioned that Naruto has never seen Ino with her hair down. In actuality, Naruto had a mission with Ino in the Princess Fuku anime episode (I believe it's episode 192), during which Ino's hair was down for the majority of the mission. Let's assume, just this once, that I meant that Naruto had never seen Ino's hair throughout Part 2 and onward, Part 1 was irrelevent XD.  
**

**Contrary to what I said for the first chapter of 'Face the Music', **_**this**_** is now my longest chapter so far. ****As well as being my longest chapter, this was also my first lemon.**

**I tried to make the biology seem relatively true (except for Naruto's apparent seminal fluid output). The general average size of an adult male's penis is around 5.5 inches. I do get kind of annoyed with seeing things like: "NARUTO'S TWELVE INCH MONSTER RIVALLED THE BEST STALLIONS!" and anything similar. Sure, natural sizes like that are found, but the odds of finding such a person in your neighbourhood are fucking ridiculous. When you think about it, 7.5 inches is actually a decent size.**

**Now like I said in the previous chapter, this fic isn't meant to be taken totally seriously. This mostly applies to Naruto's Heel Face Turn regarding Sakura (Sorry, but shit happens). But come on, the guy is head over heels for the girl (according to the manga, so it's official, now piss off). But take into account that I didn't write him as actually hating Sakura; he was standoffish mostly because he thought Sakura was still a Sasuke chaser, but (again, like I wrote) the Land of Iron still hurt him.**

**I'm essentially using this story as a test bed for my lemon writing capabilities, so let me know what you think. I'm **_**generally **_**pleased with it, but there are some things I'm either not happy with or want to change. I had to rush a few little parts of it, the ending mostly, because I wanted to get this out for the festivities.**

**Reviews are most welcome, compliment, flame, criticise…write what you will. It'll only help me make my fics better.**

**The final chapter is _incredibly _short. It'll basically be an epilogue with a touch of ambiguity.**


	3. October 11th

**Disclaimer: I still don't own Naruto etc etc...*drinks bleach*...**

**Time for our Reviewer Reponse Corner!**

**'Tristan Ludlam': Another detailed review. Much appreciated I assure you. I checked up the 'ingressed' etc etc, and indeed you were correct. Go back to chapter two and you'll see I've made some simple edits.**

**'TheRightWayAgain': It's a shame chapter 2 wasn't to your liking, but I'm not sorry. Besides, I never said a threesome was always hot did I? Personally, I'm not too keen on them, but I felt it necessary for this SEMI-serious fic. As for my humongous vocabularic discharges a.k.a 'big words', regrettably, I am not being subsidised for my displays of grammatical intellect...but let's just say that I am an intelligent person, and I actually speak that way on a day-to-day basis with my friends and parents. Therefore I am not using cacophonic ramblings in order to prove my intelligence...I just simply talk and write that way as my personal standard. Ecce homo; ergo, elk. As for the yuri...where? The biggest yuri-esque area was when Ino kissed Sakura (sharing a piece of Naruto in the process), other than that...I really don't see it. Either way, your opinion is your opinion. I actually (contrary to what I've just written) respect it, and I extend my gratitude to you for taking the time to review. Thank you very much :-)**

**Anyways...Fic time:**

* * *

Just Reward

A Naruto Three-Shot

Chapter 3: 'October 11th'

The morning sun peaked over the horizon, bathing the village with a warming glow underneath a cloudless sky despite the time of year, bursting through every crevice it touched like water. One would have to be up incredibly early in order to experience such a marvellous sight. One man had done just that...but not to see the sunrise.

The 5'11'', muscular body that sat by the kitchen table was like a statue, even as the rays shining outside the window on his left illuminated and warmed his mildly damp skin and only added to the density of his hair's bright blonde colour. His upper half remained as bare as it had during the night, a night in which he had spent the whole time drowning in sexual ecstasy with two young women he loved, and who equally reciprocated that love; his lower half was covered by a pair of black pyjama pants that ended halfway down his calves.

Naruto's arms were resting on his table, between which sat two opened scrolls. The first scroll, sitting crinkled by his flattened right hand, was a Konoha council decree that gave Naruto the legal right to defend himself against any violent Konoha citizens, be they shinobi or civilian, between the 9th and 11th of every October from then on using only less-than-lethal techniques. The reason for why any shinobi or civilian would attack him was not mentioned, but Naruto and many others already knew. Naruto had put up with so much for the past seventeen October months, and he knew that he had grown and trained enough to gain the ability to stop any more malicious actions against him. For his first generally peaceful birthday, it couldn't have been better.

The blonde turned his head in the direction of his bedroom as he thought of the two young medics silently slumbering next to a second Naruto, who had his eyes open and was dully staring at the ceiling. Originally, they had both been laying either side of the actual blonde, but Naruto's dilemma had woken him up early, and he knew sleeping it off wouldn't be an option. Acting with the best of his knowledge of stealth, he had created a shadow clone and substituted himself with it, meaning that neither girl huddled up beside him woke up from the sudden movement of losing their prop.

Naruto's mind was working on all cylinders as he ran different scenarios through his head. What he should do, what he should say…it was all starting to annoy and confuse him. He loved both of them, and if their kisses, confessions and screams during the night were anything to go by, they both loved him as well.

Therein lay the problem.

He had told himself that to choose one person would devastate the other, and he knew he'd never have the guts to allow a heart to break. But he couldn't have both of them either; village law prohibited it. What if he wanted to get married? Have children? Bigamy was effectively forbidden in Konoha. And Naruto knew he couldn't possibly look at marrying one woman and see a mistress at the same time; that was adultery in the eyes of the law. He may have only been eighteen, but Naruto figured that looking into what he would want in the years to come was a good thing to do as he felt the sun's heat creep up his skin.

It was four-thirty when he walked into the kitchen and remembered the second scroll that the Hokage had given him. She told him it was a 'suggestion' from the council elders. Naruto hadn't yet opened it because he knew those two old fools never 'suggested' anything, they only ordered, determined with having their way.

Naruto's left hand was balled up and held against his tightened lips as he stared at the table. Below the first scroll sat the second, the one he had not opened until thirty minutes before, rolled out and with every letter displayed to the brightening room. Ever since his eyes had finished moving from reading the scroll for no less than the fifth time, they remained pasted upon the paper. His body was still completely motionless, all of his energy diverted to his brain as he started thinking once more. He still couldn't believe it, and so decided to read once more.

"_Jounin Shinobi Uzumaki Naruto-san,_

_Mitokado Homura and myself, Utatane Koharu, have conversed on numerous occasions with Godaime Tsunade-hime regarding yourself and the matter of your soon-to-be-revealed heritage. Neither of us can deny with any amount of intelligence that the blood your veins carry hold the essence of that of one of our prestigious former leaders, Namikaze Minato. The Yondaime, your father, was a shinobi of the highest degree: powerful, intellectual, courageous and unwaveringly loyal amongst others._

_In light of recent events regarding your skill, determination, and service to our prosperous village, it is now clear to see that shinobi such as you are necessary in order to guarantee the protection and continued existence of Konohagakure no Sato and its citizens, not only in the modern day, but also for generations to come._

_With this in mind, my peer and I put forward a proposal to the Hokage and, after much deliberation, were permitted to forward this proposal to you._

_Uzumaki Naruto, we are extending to you the option of implementing the Clan Restoration Act (henceforth referred to as 'CRA') as means of bringing forth a new generation of Namikaze/Uzumaki shinobi that could very well rival that of the now defunct Uchiha._

_This offer, however, is being provided with conditions:_

_1. You will be required to legally revert your surname to that of your proper heritage, and become known henceforth as Namikaze Naruto._

_2. In order to ensure as many possible clan heirs as possible, multiple partnerships are necessary. Criteria dictates a minimum of two partners, maximum of five; of which you must be wed to your first within three years of initially executing the CRA._

_3. The first legitimate heir (gender irrelevant) must be birthed within two years of your first marriage; this however, does not mean the first wedded partner has to be the first one to provide a child. A legitimate heir is one who is born to parents who both hold the Namikaze name._

_Uzumaki-san, it would be wise to consider this offer, as it will bring the name Namikaze back to life, and potentially bring this village even greater prosperity. Consider this an honour, as your father was never part of a clan. The Namikaze of the past were much like the Haruno or Hatake names seen to this day._

_We anticipate a hasty response._

_Regards,_

_Utatane Koharu_

_Elder of the Konohagakure no Sato Council"_

Naruto had a lot more thinking to do. Would he sacrifice his current name and some of his freedom in order to be with the ones he loved, or would he go it alone and find the answer himself?

All that was left was to discuss it with Ino and Sakura…

* * *

**I told you this chapter was going to be incredibly short XD**

**So there we go, hope you enjoyed it! Reviews are welcome, give praise, compliments, flames, critique etc...just not a simple bloody smiley emoticon like somebody did for chapter 1 of 'Face the Music'!**

**Next piece of literary work to come from me is: I don't know. It's either going to be my rewrite of 'Broken Masks and Shattered Hearts', or it'll be chapter 2 of 'Face the Music'.**

**New Edit: The Poll results are through! Readers have opted for Naruto to change his name. This will be reflected in future one-shots that I have planned.**

**'Naruto accepts the CRA request, changes his surname to Namikaze, and begins a relationship with both Ino and Sakura: 83**

**'Naruto ignores the CRA request and begins a relationship with his new love, Ino, breaking Sakura's heart': 12**

**'Naruto ignores the CRA request, but cannot bring himself to break the heart of either girl. As such, he tries to find his own way': 4**

**'Naruto ignores the CRA request and begins a relationship with his first love, Sakura, breaking Ino's heart': 1**


End file.
